After the War
by absolx23
Summary: After saving the world, adjusting to the life of a normal teenager can be hard. Returning to Peidmont after a very adventful summer in Gravity Falls, Dipper and Mabel must deal with the challenges of a normal life and the scars of Weirdmageddon.
1. Well at least the war is over

_AN: Warning: This fic contains PTSD, self hatred/self harm, and a little bit of bullying. I'll put of specific warning for chapters, but be careful reading if any of those things hit too close to home._

 **Warnings for this chapter: PTSD, self hatred**

Chapter 1:

Returning Home

Dipper sighed and folded up the letter from his friends. Mabel was trying to coax Waddles to sit in her lap, instead of wandering around the bus. Unzipping his bag, he placed the letter under the books he had brought to read this summer. He had planned to read them all, and maybe even reread a few, but an actual mystery and actually saving the world had occupied his time instead.

"Hey, Mabel," he said, zipping his bag back up. His sister had stopped trying to get Waddles to listen to her and instead was knitting tomorrow's sweater out of her remaining knitting supplies.

"Yeah, what?" she replied, not looking up from her work.

"Do you think we should tell Mom and Dad what happened? I mean, what if they won't let us return to Gravity Falls next summer? Ford and Stan have actually broken a lot of laws, and they might try to get them arrested for it." Dipper said, looking out the window, watching the nondescript trees go by.

"I don't know." Mabel replied,"I'd feel really guilty lying to them, for what? Years?"

"Yeah. I don't know." Dipper said, fishing around in his bag for the book he had started reading before the found the journal. Opening up the book, he tried to escape to a world where he wasn't the hero.

As the hours went by and the sun began to set, the buss eventually crossed the Oregon border. A few people came on the bus and then got off. Mabel, who normally would love the chance to speak with strangers didn't bother anyone and instead worked on her sweater in silence.

Around dinner time, the bust pulled into the Piedmont bus stop. "Alright, everyone," the bus driver called,"last stop, everyone get off". Mabel folded her almost finished sweater into her bag and grabbed Waddles. Dipper committed the page number of the book he was on to memory and tossed it into his bag, zipping it up and standing behind Mabel.

As they exited the bus, Dipper smiled at the bus driver. "Thanks for letting my sister's pig on the bus, it really meant a lot to her," he said.

The bus driver let out a nervous laugh. "You're welcome, kid," he said.

"Come on, Dipper," Mabel called from the sidewalk,"You're talking too long."

"Okay, okay," he said, hopping of the bus.

Mabel grabbed her brother's hand. "Come on!" she squealed,"Mom and Dad are here to met us." She pulled her reluctant brother along at a surprising speed considering how many bags she was carrying.

Mabel turned the corner to where her mother and father were standing. Dropping her bags, she launched herself at her father. He embraced his daughter, smiling. "I see you still have all your energy."

"OMG, dad! This summer was so AWESOME! We ended up saving the…" Mabel stopped as Dipper shoot her a look.

"Um, I mean. I made a lot of friends and Grunkle Stan ended up being really nice and…" Mabel was cut off when her mom let out a gasp. Waddles had trotted behind his owner, only just reaching the site of the reuniting family.

Mabel ran back to Waddles. "This is Waddles," she proclaimed proudly. "I won him at the fair and he has been my best friend ever since!"

"Um, Mabel deary," her mom said,"I don't think we have the room to keep a pig. I mean, they grow much larger when they get older." Pure shock appeared on Mabel's face.

Stepping in, Dipper spoke up. "Well...um, Waddles is a pigmy pig, so he shouldn't grow much larger than this," he fibbed. "And uh, you can just feed him leftovers, so you don't need to spend money on pet food." Mabel gave her brother a weird look. His plan was to use the size altering crystals(that he still had) to resize Waddles slightly whenever he grew a little bit.

"Well, okay," Dipper's father said. "And I suppose if she's been taking care of it all summer, than she's already proven that she's responsible enough."

As they were talking, Dipper's stomach rumbled loud enough for everyone to hear. Mabel let out a chuckle, but their mother showed mild concern. "Come on kids," she said. "I already have dinner prepared back at home. You can tell me all about your summer while we eat."

After the short walk from the bus stop to the twin's house, they reentered their house for the first time in two months. After spending so long in the Mystery Shack, it felt odd to return to their old home. After dropping their bags at the bottom of the stairs, the Pines family sat down to dinner of steak and green beans.

As they were eating, Dipper's father spoke up. "So what do you think of your Great Uncle Stanford?"

The twins both flinched in sync. It took them a moment to realize that their father was talking about Stan, not Ford. Mabel spoke up first. "Oh, he's like really nice. At first we thought he was all mean and grumpy, but it turned out he just wasn't used to having a family." Mabel trailed off.

"I'm sure dad will be happy about his brother reconnecting with his family," the twin's father cut in,"after Stanley's funeral he shut himself off from everyone, even his younger brother."

Dipper dropped his fork in shock and it landed on his plate with a light _cling._ After all the time he spent with Ford and discovering the secrets of his family, he never thought about how it would affect his grandfather. Before anyone noticed his slip up, he picked up his fork and began eating again, but thoughts raced through his head. Why hadn't he known at least the official story of what happened to Stan and Ford? A heads-up like " _Oh, yeah, the great uncle you're staying with used to study the mysteries of Gravity Falls until he just started selling cheap tourist stuff._ " That would've made the search for the author a lot easier. Well, Dipper had never really paid attention to his father's stories, thinking they were boring and not as exciting as a good book, so he could of missed that information.

As much as Dipper had tried to hide his shock with this revelation, Mabel had noticed. She looked at him, as if to say " _Let's find a way to get out of this. We need to talk_."

"So, did you make any friends in Gravity Falls?" their mother asked, putting a chunk of steak in her mouth as she waited for her children to answer.

"Oh, yeah!" Mabel exclaimed,"There's Wendy, she's pretty cool. Soos works at the shack too. There's Candy and Grenda. I'm gonna miss them," Dipper continued eating as Mabel counted off each of the friends they made in Gravity Falls.

Thoughts whizzed around Dipper's head as he waited to speak with his sister. Looking down, he saw that he had finished most of his meal, while Mabel had (somehow) finished all of her food. "Um, can we go now?" Dipper asked, moving his food around with his fork to make it look like he had eaten more. "We need to unpack."

"Before you do that," his mother said,"we have a surprise in the living room. You can see it once you clear your dishes."

"YES! SURPRISE!" Mabel screamed suddenly.

Dipper chuckled, before standing up and gathering his dishes. Instead of dumping the excess scraps of food into the trash like he normally did, he brought out a plastic bowl from the cabinets and scraping it into there. After giving the dishes a quick washing in the sink, he placed them in the dishwasher. Mabel followed suit, doing the same thing, but she didn't have enough food left to put in the bowl.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"It's to feed Waddles," Dipper replied.

"But it's STEAK. You know, MEAT. I don't think Waddles would want to eat his friends!" Mabel said, bending down to embrace the pig who had wandered into the kitchen.

"I highly doubt Waddles knew the cows it came from. Besides, pigs are omnivores, they'll eat anything," Dipper said, bending down to place the bowl on the floor.

As soon as Dipper stood up, Waddles shot out of his owner's arms and began gobbling up the meat in the bowl.

Mabel stood up and Dipper crossed his arms proudly. "See, I was right."

"Argh, fine," Mabel replied, rolling her eyes. "Come on," she exclaimed, switching from mildly annoyed to excited in only a few moments. "We got to see what the surprise is."

Dipper ran after is excited sister, who was in a full out sprint even though the living room was only the next room over from the kitchen.

They arrived in the kitchen to see their parents sitting on the old and worn couch with two folded laptops on the coffee table.

Without hesitating, Mabel ran forward and picked up the one closest to her and hugged it to her chest. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," she squealed as she jumped up and down.

"Wait, those are for us?" Dipper asked. It was so rare for them to get new stuff. He still had only an Ultra GamePlayer, even though its successor the TSS had been out for eight years now. One of the reasons they had been sent to Gravity Falls in the first place was because their parents couldn't afford summer camp and they didn't want their kids cooped up in the house the entire summer.

"Yes." Dipper's dad replied,"my work had some extra laptops and so they were giving them away. I offered to take them off their hands."

"Dipper," Mabel said, smiling,"We can still video chat with everyone back in Gravity Falls! This is awesome!"

"Yeah, High Five!" The twins high-fived, smiles on their faces. Mabel sat down on the floor and opened up the black laptop, starting to create an email account for herself now that she was thirteen.

"Before you kids get all excited," their mother interjected,"you should probably unpack and go to sleep soon. School orientation is tomorrow, you need to get some rest."

"Yeah, right." Dipper said. Adjusting from the wildness of Gravity Falls where you didn't even know what adventure you would be going on that day to the regimented day to day activities of school would be hard.

Mabel closed her laptop and stood up. "Hey, Mabel." Dipper said.

"Yeah Dipper?" Mabel said with her usual perkiness, only mildly upset that she couldn't use her new device.

"Could I help you unpack first?" Dipper let the words hang in the air, trying to communicate that he need to speak with her alone.

If Mabel, picked up on the hint, she didn't let it show, as her demeanor remained unchanged. "Sure bro-bro," she gave Dipper a light punch and ran off, laptop still in her hands.

Dipper gave his parents a smile and grabbed his laptop and went to chase after his sister. As he neared the stairs, he saw that Mabel had already taken her bags up to her room. He set his laptop down carefully on his own bags and headed up to join his sister.

When Dipper reached the top of the stairs, he turned right to reach Mabel's bedroom. After three months of sharing a room, going back to seperate rooms would be tough, even if they did have sleepovers a lot.

The door to Mabel's room was already open a crack. Dipper pushed open the door and saw his sister's pastel pink room for the first time in a while. Posters of cute kittens and drawings by Mabel adorned the walls. Mabel had already pushed her the crayons she kept on her desk to the side and placed her laptop there. She was now placing her undershirts in her dresser.

Dipper closed the door behind him and plopped down onto the ground. "Argh, I can't believe this entire summer I never even stopped to think about how grandfather would be affected by any of this."

"Yeah," Mabel said, remaining focused on her work. "I never really stopped to think of anyone back here during the summer."

Dipper pulled Mabel's other bag toward him. "Lying to mom and dad is just feels so...wrong. I mean we kinda have to do, but I wish we didn't."

"Well once we get video chat set up with Stan and Ford we could always just ask them. I mean, it is kinda their secret," Mabel replied.

"Yeah, I guess so," Dipper replied. He opened up the duffel bag and pulled out Mabel's scrapbook. He opened up to the back and started slipping any pictures containing Ford out of their holders. He didn't know if their parents would flip through Mabel's scrapbook, but he would rather remove any record of the supernatural just to be safe.

As Dipper was making his way through the book backwards, leaving most pages with only one or two pictures and small stack of photos were forming by his side, he came to a page completely dedicated to a supernatural adventure they had. Placing his other hand slightly above the paper as a foolhardy attempt to muffle the sound, he began to rip the page out.

The sound of paper tearing caught Mabel's attention. She whipped around and quickly bounded over to where Dipper was sitting. "What the heck are you doing?" she exclaimed.

"We can't let mom and dad see all the stuff that happened to us," Dipper said as he finished ripping out the page and tossing it onto the pile.

Dipper looked up and saw all the shock and fear on his sister's face. Guilt twinged in his stomach. "Don't worry," he said, attempting to calm her down. "It's not like I'll burn it or anything. You can hide it somewhere when I'm done. Don't you still have one of those stuffed animals with pockets in your closet somewhere?"

"Oh, yeah," Mabel said, remembering as her cheery demeanor returned. She bolted off to her closet as Dipper returned to the scrapbook.

"Hey, Dip-dip," Mabel said as she searched through the clothes and stuff animals in her closet.

"Yeah?" he replied out of her line of sight.

"What was that thing about Waddles being a pigmy pig? Did you and Ford do some nerd tests on him while I wasn't looking?"

"No. I was thinking whenever Waddles got a bit bigger, we could size him down a tad with the flashlight. Just do it in small increments, no one would know the difference."

As Mabel tried to think of a reply, she found what she was looking for. Pulling out a giant furry purple stuffed bear, she set it down on the floor. It was about a head shorter than the twins and had a zipper running along its belly.

"Hey there Mister Hiddy-hole," Mabel said as she unzipped the pocket. "I never really liked you, your zipper was too uncomfortable, but now I have a really important job for you."

Dipper had stood and handed Mabel all the pages and pictures he removed from the scrapbook. As Mabel stuffed them into the pocket, she felt her stomach twinge. This scrapbook was exceedingly important and shouldn't just be hidden in the darkest corner of her closet. She shook her head. It wasn't like they needed it anymore. Those adventures were so impressionable and so scary, it was impossible to forget. And Stan, the person who actually forgot had a full color copy of it(apparently if you enabled the proper setting, the copier machine in the shack could also copy books the same way it copied humans instead of like a normal copier machine. It took a lot of ink though).

Mabel zipped the bear's stomach back up. Picking up the large(yet surprisingly light) stuffed animal, she tossed it back into her closet.

Mabel turned back to her brother. "So, are you actually gonna help me unpack, or was that just to get me alone?"

Dipper chuckled. "Fine, I'll help," he said, going back to his sister's duffel bag and pulling out all the stuff she brought.

The two of them made quite a team. Mabel had brought much more stuff than Dipper, but they were able to quickly put most of it away(even if was in random places that Mabel insisted made sense).

Mabel tossed the geode she had picked up between her hands. Well, geode wasn't really the right word. It was much to light. In reality, it was a cheap replica Stan sold at the shack gift shop. He had given it to his grandniece to make up for leaving Waddles outside.

She scanned the room, looking for a place to put it. Her eyes landed on her window sill. It was still covered in glitter from "The Great Glittery Sparrow Incident" and various items, such as her first set of knitting needles and a unicorn snowglobe.

As Mabel placed the "geode" on the window sill, her hand accidently knocked the snow globe to the ground, luckily the soft carpet kept it from breaking, but that wasn't what concerned Mabel.

Her eyes widened as she saw the overturned snow globe on her carpet, most of the glitter pooling to one side.

Memories shot through her mind.

 _The feeling of tears on her face and the smell of evening air filtered through a sweater._

 _The warmth of the rift through her hands as she took it from her backpack._

 _The mesmerizing swirls of interdimensional jelly._

 _The sound of glass shattering in the dirt and the feeling of electricity rippling through the clearing._

 _Blendin's voice, laughing, turning into the harsh sound of Bill Cipher._

 _Fear shooting through her veins, posing her to run as Blendin..no Bill approached her._

 _Sleepiness dulling her senses, dulling her sense of fear. What was she supposed to do? What had happened? Who should she tell? Ford and Dipper? Who were they? Why should she? They abandoned her._

 _Coldness and darkness being replaced by warmth and light. A brightly colored pastel world spread below her._

"M-mabel?" A voice brought Mabel out of her memories. No, she wasn't back in the bubble. Weirdmageddon was over. They had defeated Bill. She was back at home. She could feel her plush carpet, a dull pink, under her knees.

She was kneeling in front of the overturned snow globe. Yes, this was just a snow globe. If it broke, the worst that could happen was something valuable getting wet or someone cutting themselves on the glass, not the end of the world.

Tears were streaming down her face. Her hand was over her mouth. She allowed it to fall to her side. Dipper was holding her shoulder.

"Mabel, what was that?" her brother asked.

Mabel's breaths were extremely fast and shallow. She tried to get words out. Complex sentences and explanations ran through her head, but she could only get one phrase out "I remember."

Dipper moved to sit in front of his sister, to hold her hands. "What do you remember?"

He noticed the snow globe by his leg. He picked it up, moving it around. "Oh, Mabel." he said,"It's not your fault. You just broke the rift when you ran out of the house. It was an accident. I should've told you, then you would've known to be more careful."

"THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED!" Mabel screamed, a fresh batch of tears began to stream down her face. She buried her face in her skirt. It was all her fault. She shouldn't of been so _stupid_. Why did she have to trust everyone?

"M-mabel," Dipper said, gently touching her arm. Mabel flinched away. She didn't deserve to be forgiven. It was all her fault. Her fault that the townspeople got turned into stone. Her fault Ford was tortured. Her fault Stan lost his memory. If only she had said no. If only she had been realistic. If only she had taken even _one_ moment to think of those living outside of Gravity Falls. If only she had thought of what Dipper and Ford could have discovered together.

"Then what happened?" Dipper said. Mabel couldn't see him, but she could imagine the pity on his face.

"I-I-I," she choked out, the words catching in her throat. "The rift didn't get broken by an accident. While I was in the woods, Blendin approached me. He said if I gave him the rift, he could create a time bubble. Time wouldn't move forward. We could stay in Gravity Falls forever. We wouldn't have to go back to school. We wouldn't have to grow up and get a job. I could stay in the one place where I had friends."

A fresh bout of sobbing racked the young girl's small frame. "I WAS SO STUPID!" Mabel cried some more, until she was calm enough to speak again.

"But it wasn't Blendin. Bill had possessed him. He took the rift and smashed it. It's my fault Weirdmageddon happened."

Dipper was taken aback. There was his sister, sobbing uncontrollably. Maybe he could say something to make her feel better. " _The time bubble kept Bill from escaping, confined Weirdmageddon to Gravity Falls."_ However, that was blatantly untrue. Ford had explained that the weirdness of Gravity Falls acted like a magnet, to strong for Bill to stray to far from it.

Dipper embraced Mabel. He didn't care that she tried to avoid it. "It's okay. If it wasn't for Weirdmageddon, Ford wouldn't trust Stan again. There wasn't any lasting damage(that part was a lie, but at least they wasn't any lasting physical damage). Stan got his memories back. If Bill had remained trapped in the Nightmare Realm, he would've found another dimension to conquer, somewhere without us. I would of crushed mom and dad and I wouldn't get to spend the rest of my life with my favorite person in the world."

Mabel had stopped crying now, but she didn't look up. "Just, go away. I'll be fine." Dipper stood up, but didn't leave. "I said LEAVE," Mabel screamed. Slamming her head up with the force of the last word. Dipper could see that her eyes were bloodshot. Her veins were swollen. Tears and snot caked her face. Her irises were extremely vibrant. She stared at her brother. "I said leave. I'll be fine." She placed her head back into her lap.

As much as Dipper wanted to stay and comfort his sister, he also wanted to respect her wishes.

He walked out of Mabel's overly colorful room to the muted browns of the rest of the house. Carefully and silent, he walked down the stairs and grabbed his own bags and laptop.

Flipping the light on, he saw that his room was just as he left it. The placed his laptop on his neat desk and began to return his books to their proper positions on his bookshelf. He had brought a few other pairs of clothes, but since Stan never made him change his clothes or complained about how he was always wearing the same thing, filling that space with books was a good idea.

As he put each book away, he thought of the stories contained inside them. Tales of teens, not even old enough to drive, saving the world from some supernatural threat. That hit _way_ too close to home now. The more he thought of the tales contained in each book compared to his own life, he came up with a few differences. Most of them had several years between "magic is real" and "okay now you need to save the world". Most of them also had other characters who were also involved in the supernatural. A whole underground society. Dipper and Mabel only had their grunkles.

Since Dipper was so caught up in his thoughts, he wasn't paying too much attention to his work. He dropped one of the books. Looking at the cover, he realised that it was the finale to one of his favorite series. His friend(a member of his DDnmD group) and made a custom cover to celebrate the occasion(also pre-ordered the hardcover edition for him). On the back was one of his favorite quotes " _The heroes burden"._ The rest of his group of fellow nerds had teased him(playfully) for such an odd favorite quote. He had explained that it was his favorite, because it was about not glorifying being a hero. Sure, they were fictional characters, but this series was the best with showing how not only do the heroes have the weight of the world on their shoulders, but how even if they suffered no physical injuries they would still carry the scars of their fight.

Dipper smiled at the cruel irony of it all. If the story of his life was fictional, he would compliment the writer on how Mabel crying in the other room was a great way to show the longtime repercussions of Weirdmageddon, even if everything was reversed after Bill's defeat. As much as he loved when stories showed that it wasn't just a happy ending from there, that was what he wanted in his life. A happy ending.

After he finished putting all the books away, Dipper stood up. On the top of the bookshelf were the minis his grandfather had carved for his DDnmD group.

Seeing these minis reminded Dipper of how much he missed his group. Since he was the DM(dungeon master) they had decided to put the campaign on hold for the summer. Since he didn't expect to be able to play in Gravity Falls, he had left all the supplies here. Even if he did get to play with Ford, they were just playing the starter campaign to save setup time. He missed the complex stories he got to tell each week. He had promised he would think of new monster and plot ideas during the summer. He had been too busy to write them down, but not only did he have so many encounter ideas he also had someone who had seen countless other dimensions and could help him write stories.

Dipper picked up the nearest mini, a paladin, and flipped it over. Carved on the bottom of the base was two elegant letters. A S and a P. Sherman Pines. Dipper was hit with another wave of sadness. If his estimate was correct, his grandfather would be growing up mainly after Stan was disowned. Did he look up to his older brother who was earning PhDs at a record rate? His father said that "Ford" had shut Shermie out of his life after "Stan's funeral".

Dipper put the mini down and looked at the clock. It was late and he was exhausted(emotionally more than physically). Only taking his vest and shoes off, Dipper plopped down on the bed. All of his thoughts buzzed around in his head, eventually forming into dreams.


	2. We are beginning

**Warnings for this chapter: Minor bullying**

Chapter 2:

School

"Pines, Mabel," one of the school administrators read off from her list. Mabel jumped off from her seat on the cafeteria benches. It was the first day of school for Dipper and Mabel. Even though orientation was slightly less than a week ago, they would only just be getting their schedules now.

She took the envelope from the woman and sat back down next to her brother. She began zealously ripping it open.

Before the admin even read off of her list, Dipper had already stood up to receive his envelope. When she said "Pines, Mason," Dipper was already in position to receive his schedule.

"Oh," she said surprised, handing Dipper is letter. With a quick "Thank you, mam," Dipper returned to his seat.

Dipper sat down and carefully opened up the envelope. Unfolding the paper on the table, he looked over at his sister's next to him.

"What's your first period class?" Mabel asked, excited.

"Honors English with Mrs. Elm." Dipper replied.

"Yeah! Same," Mabel cried, punching the air.

"Let's see," Mabel said, taking Dipper's paper and comparing it with hers. It was very common for them to end up in the same class together, as many times, the computer sorted them randomly with the same algorithm(their last name).

"What's this?" Mabel exclaimed, throwing Dipper's schedule on the table. She was pointing to his fourth period slot: 'Algebra with Mr. Oaksen'.

"We're supposed to try to get in all our classes together!" Mabel wailed. She tried to keep her voice down, even though the cafeteria was so noisey, only Dipper could really hear her. "That's why I signed up for all Honors classes!"

"Okay, okay," Dipper said,"Calm down. During orientation I signed up for Algebra instead of Math. Last year I talked with Ms. Willow about skipping eight grade math since I couldn't take it as a summer course on it since I would be out of town. She said it was okay and she would sign me through. I asked about you, and since you were barely passing in her class, she said it was best for you to go into normal classes."

"But..but," Mabel stammered out.

"It's fine." Dipper said, putting an arm on her shoulder. "We still have the rest of our classes together and we'll still see each other after school and during lunch." As much as Dipper tried to reassure himself and his sister, it still felt wrong after what had happened last summer. The real reason he wanted to take Algebra, was so next year, he could take more advanced classes in high school, since his math credit for that year would already been taken. He had spoken about it with Ford and they agreed that he should take more advanced biology courses if he couldn't be his apprentice, as it would prepare him for when he was older.

"Alright kids," the admin who handed out their schedules said to their table. "Your first period class will start in a minute or so. You have five minutes to get to your class, but since this is the first day, we will be more lenient with tardies." She began explaining how the schedules worked, old news since most students had been in this school for two years, but she was cut of by the bell ringing.

As soon as the bell let out its ear-splitting screech, the entire school grabbed their bags and speed walked(as running was banned) out of the cafeteria.

Trying to keep together in the chaos, Dipper and Mabel soon found their classroom. It was fairly close to the entrance, which was good news. The classroom was quite neat and lacked any posters on the walls(something they had come to expect).

Projected on the board was the seating chart. It was in alphabetical order. The twins walked over to their seats and sat down. They were in the far end of the classroom. Dipper's seat was right up against a bookshelf, creating a comfortable little alcove if he sat sideways.

Class hadn't started yet and people were still streaming in. Mabel took out her colorful glitter covered binder and began plotting out how they would get to and from classes on her map. As Mabel was doing that, someone sat down at the seat next to her.

It was Alexia. She wasn't directly mean towards Mabel, per se, but she did brush her off and was one of the main reasons Mabel didn't have any friends. She was quite studious and intelligent and generally looked down on people who were not as smart as her and that included Mabel. With Mabel being in mostly Honors classes and Alexia getting the best grades, the rest of the class looked up to her. Truth be told, even Dipper admired her a bit.

Alexia turned to face Mabel. "Oh, you," she said, looking Mabel over. Then she turned to look at Dipper. "And Mason," she said(as many times as Dipper told her, she refused it call him anything other than Mason). "I never got to congratulate you on your final history essay last year. Its was quite well written, much better than most of the class's." Before Dipper could say anything, she turned the front of the room and raised her hand.

"Argh." Mabel said, turning around to speak with her brother. "I hate her. She thinks she's so high and mighty because she's the best in the class. I hope you get ahead of her on the honor roll this year bro."

"I don't think I can. She usually gets 100% on everything and does all the extra credit. If she misses something, it's usually because there's something unfair or odd about the question. It would be unlikely for me to get that same question correct." Dipper said as he worked on pathing out the route he would take to his classes.

While Dipper and Mabel were talking, the teacher, Mrs. Elm, came over to speak with Alexia. "Ma'am," Alexia said,"May I please change my seat. I have...problems," she looked over at Mabel,"with the person next to me."

"Of course," Mrs. Elm said. She lead Alexia over to another seat, smiling.

Mabel dropped her head onto her desk, suddenly closing the binder rings around her orange sweater. She suddenly jerked up, her loose papers falling to the ground as she tried to shake the binder off.

"Calm down," Dipper said, walking over and trying to hold his sister's arm still. Once Mabel stopped shaking he unclipped the binder and started trying to put the papers back in the binder. Before he could finish, the bell rang.

Without bothering to finish or do anything, Dipper hopped back into his chair, almost knocking Mabel over. He didn't know how strict this teacher was and wanted to be on the safe side.

Mrs. Elm began doing roll call. As she went down the list, she eventually said "Mabel Pines,"

"Here!" she screamed, overly excitedly. A couple of chuckles rang through the classroom and Mrs. Elm smiled slightly.

"Mason Pines," she said.

"Oh, um present," Dipper said, almost whispering. "And um, I prefer to go by Dipper,"

A wave a chuckles spread through the classroom and Dipper slid down in his seat, suddenly feeling very small.

Mrs. Elm made a note on her clipboard. "Dipper, alright," she said, narrowing her eyes in suspicion at such an odd choice of nickname.

The rest of the period passed uneventfully as Mrs. Elm went over the rules of the classroom and passed out the syllabus. As soon as the bell rang, Dipper and Mabel packed up and headed to their next class, History. As they were leaving, they were happy to see that Alexia was going the other way, presumably to another class.

When they reach the history classroom, Dipper was happy to see his friends all chatting in a group. Rebecca, their bard, saw Dipper enter and waved to him.

Excited to see his friends again, Dipper rushed over to them. "See, I told you he wouldn't get eaten by mosquitoes," Alex, their warlock said jabbing Daron, their cleric, with his elbow.

"Hah, hah, hah," Daron replied,"That's was I joke I made one time. Why are you still holding me to it?"

"So," Rebecca asked,"you got a lot of new ideas to make up for putting the campaign on hold all summer,"

"Oh, yeah," Dipper said, excited,"the next time you met some Kobolds, you gonna regret it so much," He was thinking of having Kobolds, a standard cannon fodder enemy be able to stack just like the gnomes.

"Don't tell us," Alex said, interrupting Dipper,"We still need a surprise,"

"Heh, right," Dipper replied.

As they were talking, the History teacher entered the classroom. "Yes," Monty, their paladin said,"I know this teacher, my sister had her. She must of changed her name over the years. She's like super chill. She'll definitely let us sit where we want." A round of whispered cheers echoed through the DDmnD group.

Dipper looked to the front of the classroom to see that Monty's prediction was in fact correct. Mrs. Elwood had written on the board " _Feel free to choose your own seats."_ As the group settled down into their seat, instead of sitting on the tops of desks, Dipper saw that Mabel had chosen a seat in the corner of the room, about 3 rows down.

"Hey," Dipper asked his friend group,"can Mabel join us?"

Everyone agreed, so Dipper walked over to where Mabel was sitting. He crouched down so he would be at his sister's level. She hadn't bothered to unpack anything and had instead just laid her head down on her desk.

"Hey, Mabel," Dipper said,"So I talked with my friends and they said you could join us. This class is free seating, so don't you want to sit with us."

Mabel didn't say anything. She didn't even bother to look up from her arms.

"Um, Mabel," Dipper said, concerned,"what is it?"

"I realize why I didn't want summer to end," she whispered.

"Uh?" Dipper was confused.

"Working myself to my limit so I can stay in your honors classes, Alexia's taunts, you having your friends and me not having any. It's all just so exhausting. Sure, things were better when I was younger. When everyone was more immature and classes were easier, but now." Mabel whispered, only loud enough so that Dipper could hear it.

"Mabel, it's okay," Dipper said,"we can work together. I can help you with your work. Alexia's just a stuck up jerk. I'm sure my friends would like to hang out with you. When we worked together we could defeat a chaos demon, school's gonna be easy." Dipper wasn't sure if that really was true. He never really could relate to Mabel's problems with school. Retaining information was easy and math problems were nothing more than fun challenges. What he could relate to was not having any friends. For most of their life, Mabel was the (relatively) popular one. However, as their peers grew up and advanced classes separated the studious from the not so much, they became less like Mabel. Her outbursts and odd quirks became more of an annoyance to everyone. Around this same time, Dipper started to met his friends. Alex shared his love of the paranormal, Monty shared his love of stories, Daron shared his love of photography and video making, and Rebecca was in his band group.

He'd gotten them all together to play DDnmD one day and they had become a tight knit friend group ever since. That was around the time they started middle school. During that same time, Mabel had lost friends. As much as he hated to admit it, until it was just the two of them stuck in Gravity Falls, Dipper had really started to grow apart from his sister.

But no more. The two of them would take on school and the rest of the challenges life threw at them together.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Dipper and Mabel went to their classes, got their syllabuses, and then came home to an empty house. It would be about an hour until their mom got home from work. That would give them time to video chat with their grunkles. They had already set up scheduling and scavenged enough parts from Crash Site Omega to get internet in the Arctic Ocean.

Dipper and Mabel sat down in the middle of Dipper's room, his laptop open in front of them. It was currently loading, but in a few seconds the call went through.

The other side of the call showed what looked like a motel room with Stan and Ford sitting on one of the beds with the laptop on what seemed to be a desk.

Excited, all four of them started saying hi at the same time. Combining that with poor microphone quality both ways and Mabel's excited squealing, an ear splitting jumbled buzz came out of the poor quality laptop speakers.

"Alright, alright," Stan said,"Mabel calm down." Eventually, Mabel calmed, down allowing them to have a conversation without overloading the laptops.

"Wait, where are you guys?" Dipper asked, noticing that the background didn't seem to match a boat.

"Well, apparently even if you have convincing fake passports to get past the fact one of you is legally dead and the other one is on the terrorist watch list, you can't go on a plane if you have a metal plate in your head without a doctor's note for the surgery." Ford said,"so, we're going on a roadtrip to Maine instead and getting the boat there. Then we'll head off to the Arctic Ocean."

"Oh, bumper," Dipper said. He did feel bad that the Grunkles would have to put of their dreams for a while, but he really couldn't think of anything else to say, even if " _Oh, bumper_ " was a little too casual.

"So, how was your first day of school?" Ford asked.

Then spent the rest of their chat talking about their first day of school. Sometimes they would have to inform Ford about how education had changed those 30 years in the portal, but it went pretty smoothly. He was very excited about Dipper signing up for all those extra classes and they all agreed that Alexia was a jerk(even if Ford was very hesitant to agree). With just the four of them chatting, they could almost forget about all their problems.

However, in all their happiness, they forgot to ask if they should lie to their parents about what happened in Gravity Falls. Dipper didn't even mention Shermie, neither did Mabel mention remembering that she was the one who started Weirdmageddon.

 _A/N: Well, that chapter came out sooner than I expected. Probably because it wasn't abnormally long like the last one and I had thanksgiving break. Also I'm really bad at thinking up human sounding names, and Dipper's DDmnD group are such minor characters(we probably won't see them again) so I thought "Why not make them references to the creators of my favorite shows?". So I did. My thinking up name problem is also why most people who go to Dipper's school(and work there) have tree related last names._


	3. It's us- yes, we're back again-

**Warnings for this chapter: Nightmares/PTSD**

Chapter 3:

The Dream Demon is Dead…

 _Dipper gripped the journal as the monsters stood over them, their glowing yellow eyes staring into his soul. He took a step backwards, his entire body shaking from fear. As he backed up, he tripped over a rock, landing flat on his back._

" _Wait, stop," A voice rang out. The monsters parted and their eyes dulled, fading into shadows._

 _Dipper picked himself off the ground to see who it was. It was Wendy. She was still pretty beat up, but overall she was okay._

" _Oh, Wendy," Dipper said, running forward to hug her. "I can't believe you're safe."_

 _As they embraced, Wendy reached over Dipper's head and pulled the second journal out of his backpack._

 _Wendy jumped back suddenly, waving the journal in the air. Her eyes began to glow as the monsters began to walk toward her._

" _Wah," Dipper let out._

" _HAH," Wendy said, her voice sounding like Bill's,"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FELL FOR THAT PINETREE!"_

 _The monsters swarmed toward Wendy as she stalked away from Dipper. He feebly tried to run after her, but he tripped over nothing, leaving him on the cold hard ground sobbing._

 _Out of the fog walked Mabel. The ground turned to the hardwood floors of their old attic bedroom in the Shack._

" _Bro-bro?" she asked, walking towards Dipper. When she reached him, she got down on her knees to reach his level. "Are you okay?"_

 _Dipper tried to stop sobbing, to slow his heart rate, but failed. He just pulled his knees closer to his chest, curling up in the fetal position._

 _As Dipper did that, Mabel reached forward and grabbed the journal that had fallen on the ground, the first one. Looking at a spot on the ground towards her left, she held it tight to her chest and started to walk away, back into the fog._

 _Noticing this, Dipper scampered up to try to chase after her, but she was already gone. As he closed his eyes, giving up, the scene changed._

 _He was standing back in Ford's secret study. The one remaining journal was tucked under one arm and he held the memory gun in his other hand. The white sheets covering all the Bill tapestries were gone, revealing them in their full glory. Ford was stalking towards him, the strange yellow glow blurring his glasses._

" _G-get back," Dipper choked out, raising the memory gun at Ford as he walked backwards. Ford didn't stop. He continued walking towards him, his hand out, not saying a word._

 _Then he hit a wall. With nowhere to go and Ford almost upon him, Dipper closed his eyes and fired the memory gun._

 _It hit Ford right in the forehead and the elderly scientist collapsed to the ground._

Dipper woke up with a start. His clothes were stuck to his body with sweat, but he was back in his house. His breathing was fast and his heart pounded in his chest.

 _It's okay_ he thought, putting his hands up to his face. _Bill is dead. He died two months ago. Everything is okay. You are safe at home._

Dipper glanced over at the digital clock on his dresser. The dull red LED lights read four in the morning. He sighed and his stomach rumbled. Even if he could calm himself down enough to fall back asleep, now that he was awake he knew he was hungry now.

Dipper got out of bed, the book he was reading before bed fell to the floor. He walked over to the window of his dresser and stared at the moon, running over the dream again and again in his head until he forgot important details.

These dreams were normal occurrences for him. After the adventure at the haunted convenience store at the start of the summer, he had nightmares at least once a week. The progression of horrors after that had done nothing to help his recovery.

The night after he discovered that Ford had once been Bill's pawn, he had one of his worst nightmares. Fearing it may of been the demon himself haunting his dreams, he headed down to the basement to speak with Ford. They had a nice talk. Ford confessed that he too had those dreams and also had trouble telling the real Bill from the Bill of his imagination. They traded tips on how to handle nightmares and then Dipper headed back to his room.

Now he had a set routine for what to do if he had a nightmare. Go over it enough for your mind to become confused, get a snack if he was hungry, and then read a tame book with the all the lights on as he tried to sleep. It wasn't the best method as many times it left him sleep deprived the next morning, but it was the best he could think of.

After running over the dream about five times, most of the details were lost to Dipper, however, some of the more harrowing images, Wendy holding the journal as he eyes glowed, Mabel walking away into the fog, and Ford collapsed on the floor just wouldn't leave his mind.

His stomach gurgled once more, as if to say " _Don't forget about me!_ " Dipper headed out of his room, toward the kitchen, trying not to make any sound. As he walked by Mabel's room, he heard a sound coming from her room. When he stopped to listen to it, it sounded like a combination of sobbing and...meowing?

Curious, he pushed open Mabel's door to see her sitting in the middle of her bed with all the lights on. She was curled up hugging a stuffed bear. Unwiped tears were streaming down her face as she attempted to use the rhythms of her mews to slow her breathing.

When Dipper entered the room, Mabel looked up. "Mabel," Dipper asked,"are you okay?"

Mabel didn't respond. She simply buried her face back into her stuffed animal's stomach.

Hesitantly, Dipper walked over to Mabel's bed and sat down on the unicorn bedspread. "Mabel, what is it?" he asked.

Stopping her meowing, Mabel choked out "I had a nightmare…"

"Oh, it's okay." Dipper said,"I have nightmares a lot too. In fact I just had one. That's why I was awake."

Mabel was able to pause both her crying and her mewing to speak. "I-it was horrible... Stan was there and he...Bill...I," Mabel burst into another round of tears.

"It's okay," Dipper said, putting his arms around his sister. "You don't have to talk about it,"

"Um, Dipper," Mabel said, looking up,"can we have a sleepover. I don't want to go to sleep on my own."

"Err, sure." Dipper said,"I just need to get a snack first." Hopping off the bed, he headed down to the kitchen. He unlocked the newly installed baby gate(to keep Waddles in the kitchen) and was met with some playful nuzzles from the pig.

Making sure to close the gate behind him, Dipper opened the fridge and grabbed a couple of cheese sticks. He stuck those under his arm, not minding the cold and tried to open the gate back up without dropping them.

He succeeded and quickly headed back to his room to grab his pillow and blankets. He tossed both the cheese sticks and the pillow on the blanket for easy carrying. He also grabbed a random book off his shelf(one he knew wasn't that scary). Bundling up the blanket and throwing it over his shoulder like a sack, he headed back towards Mabel's room.

Opening the door, he found that the lights were still on, but Mabel had snuggled back under the covers. Quietly walking over to Mabel's carpet, Dipper spread out his blanket and propped up his pillow with one of the stuff animals strewn about the floor.

After eating the cheese sticks to quiet his rumbling stomach and tossing the wrappers in the trash, Dipper pulled out the book and began to read. Eventually(at a semi-reasonable hour), he drifted to sleep.

However, Mabel didn't fall asleep for many more hours. When Dipper had entered, she was wide awake, simply pretending to be asleep. The young girl had tried her hardest to block out the horrors of her dream, and the horrors of her own memories, new again. She didn't want to worry her brother, or her Grunkles, and definitely not her parents. She had to put on a happy face. She had to be " _Mabel, the one of cheer, joy, and glitter_ ".

Her shoulders were much too small for such a burden.


	4. We won or we think we did

_Warnings for this chapter: Self-hatred_

Dipper was walking home. He'd just finished a DDnmD session with his friends. It was now early October and they had easily gotten back into their schedule of weekly hour-long sessions every Friday after school(sometimes they had longer weekend ones too). Dipper had lived up to his promise and integrated most of the monsters he'd encountered into the campaign. He'd even asked Ford for world building help a couple times.

As Dipper neared his house, a rustling sound from one of the bushes caused him to almost jump into a fighting position. He was able to stop himself, but his heart was still racing. Even since he and Mabel fought the gnomes, there was always a chance that some lone gnome would try to seek their revenge. It had gotten worse after their encounter with the Lilliputians. Now the twins had two small species who wanted them both dead.

But this was Piedmont, not Gravity Falls. There were no supernatural beings residing in this town or the hills nearby. It was probably just a stray cat or something.

Shaking his head, Dipper headed back to his house, lost in his thoughts of what hoops he would force his players through next session.

When he reached the door of his house, Dipper broke out of this thoughts and slowly opened the door, bracing himself for Waddles to come barreling out, with Mabel close behind, but today there was nothing. No Waddles attempting to see the outside. No Mabel working on her homework or knitting in the living room while watching reruns of Ducktective.

Trying to be silent, Dipper dropped his heavy backpack filled with his notes and rule books at its usual place on the right side of the door. Mabel's pink and glitter covered backpack was in its place on the left, so she had at least made it home safely, but it was still odd.

His first guess was that Mabel was doing something in her room. As he made his way to the stairs, he found Waddles sitting there, trying to make it up the stairs on his short little legs and failing. Okay, so Mabel is most definitely in her room. That's odd. She's been spending a lot more time downstairs since Waddles is stuck down here.

Brushing aside the oddity of the situation, Dipper headed up the stairs. As he turned towards Mabel's room, he heard loud sobbing from the other side of the door. Rushing forward and swinging open the door, he found Mabel standing there. She was wearing her old shooting star sweater, now faded from when she'd left it outside. Tears were streaming down her face and she was blindly flailing about, punching the air.

"M-Mabel," Dipper ran forward and tried to grab her wrists and calm her down. "C-calm down. What is it?" he asked. Her headband had been knocked off, leaving her tangled bangs to cover her eyes.

Through her tears, Dipper could make out a steady mantra of "It's my fault. I hurt them," and other similar statements. She hadn't seemed to notice Dipper, but she was still straining against his handhold.

"Mabel. You have to talk to me. Just calm down. Tell me what's wrong."

Mabel stopped struggling as if she had broken out of a trance. She still wouldn't push her hair out of her eyes and she could stop breathing quickly. She broke one hand out and pointed to her overturned laptop on the floor. Next to it was a broken snow globe, the same one that triggered her flashback when they first returned home.

While Dipper bent down to pick it up, Mabel ran towards her bed and jumped on it, burying herself under and oversized pillow. Dipper sat down cross-legged and stared at what was currently on screen.

The first email was from Wendy and was addressed to both Dipper and Mabel and their grunkles:

So, there's been some problems in regards to the people who were turned into stone during Weirdmageddon. They've been complaining of joint pain and movement problems and such. The good news is, the town doctor was present during Weirdmageddon so they can tell him everything. The bad news is, although the symptoms match a couple known diseases, every test comes back as negative. He thinks that it could because of turning into stone stuff. After I finally forced my dad to see a doctor, the doctor recognized me and asked me to pass the message along to Dr. Pines. I suppose you guys have a right to know also. He had to blot out everyone's names, but he sent me a file of everyone's reports for you to looks over.

Dipper scrolled down to see an attached PDF file. He clicked on it, opening pages of scanned medical documents. At first glance, he couldn't make heads or tails of it, but he supposed he could with a lot of internet searches and time. Minimizing the PDF viewer, he continued scrolling for Ford's reply:

Dear Ms. Coudoroy,

Although I am not a full medical doctor, I am more qualified than your local small town medical professional. My knowledge of shiftstone from studying its dimension of origin seems to be relevant to the townspeople's situation. Due to the fact we forced the shiftstone covering their bodies to retreat(they were not turned to stone, but actually covered in a substance known as shiftstone. This is the same stuff Bill's body was made of. I know you probably have millions of inquiries Dipper, but to avoid boring Wendy, I'll stick to what's relevant) there is a high chance it isn't completely gone. It could have easily seeped into their bodies(a common side effect suffered by the lithomancers of this dimension) causing the symptoms listed. Even with full four-day exposure, it will most likely not be fatal. With our current medical knowledge, however, there is no cure. Those who were turned to stone will have to limit their physical activity to avoid asthma-like symptoms and joint pain. Luckily, there is little that can worsen it and the townsfolk should be fine in they listen to their bodies and don't push them.

As for those who were turned into tapestries for Bill's hall, this kind of transmutation will most likely have lasting effects, even for the short time you spent transformed. Lack of motivation regardless of how much you try and know you need to do something is most likely(the internet tells me the current medical terminology for this is "executive dysfunction"). There's long-winded explanation, but I will spare you it.

-Dr. Stanford Pines

Dipper closed the computer and stood up. He felt like he should be feeling something, but he wasn't. It was like his mind stopped. His body got up and placed the laptop on Mabel's desk. So there are long term consequences to Weirdmaggedon. Bill still tortures us from beyond his grave, he thought. He could hear the steady beating of his heart , but his limbs felt numb. What could he do? He felt so lost, directionless. This wasn't a threat he could fight. He couldn't spring into action. Even if Ford was here, he couldn't order him to do something. There wasn't anything anyone could do.

He turned to Mabel. If this lost numbness was what he felt, then how was she feeling? Either she had stopped crying, or it was so silent now he couldn't tell. She'd always blamed herself for Weirdmaggedon, and now something bad had come out of it. Dipper just didn't know what to do. In Gravity Falls, he could always do something. Every problem could always be outsmarted or outplayed. Not now. Nightmares, shiftstone sickness, trauma. There was nothing anyone could do about any of those things. Maybe give a team of scientists a decade or so a government funding and they could find something. But that would require telling the truth..to everyone.

Dipper breathed in. Fo cus, he told himself. There was a problem he could deal with right infront of him. He hopped on the bed. "Mabel. It's okay," he said,"Everyone makes mistakes. You were scared and you felt betrayed. No one blames you."

Hearing this, Mabel sat up. She was clutching a purple bunny. Using her free hand, she wiped away her tears and hair. "That's not true," she mumbled, looking at the bedspread.

"Really?" Dipper said, trying to sound dismissive, like there was no one in the world who could blame her. In reality, a knot of worry was twisting in his stomach, waiting in fear for the answer.

"I do," she stated. The way her eyes scrunched up made her brother brace for more tears, but none came. There were none left. She'd cried the last tear her body could make, for now.

Dipper's entire comforting plan collapsed and he was back to square one. Next he tried something obvious, but usually overlooked. "Is there anything I can get you?" he asked tentatively.

"No. Just leave." Mabel shot back, the contempt for herself clear in her voice.

But Dipper didn't want to leave. As he quickly glanced around the room, his eyes fell upon the shattered snowglobe by the wall. "What about cleaning up the snowglobe? Having broken glass is around is dangerous and the water stain would be hard to explain to mom and…." Before his anxious ranting could continue, Mabel stumbled out of bed, cutting him off.

She walked forward. After stumbling a bit, she strode over her desk. She grabbed an empty shoe box from one of her many half finished craft projects. As she did, the a small pile of unglued glitter fell onto the desk. If Mabel noticed it, she didn't acknowledge the mess.

Crouching down, she gingerly started picking up the larger shards of glass and placing them in the box. If the small surface finger pricks bothered her, then she didn't show it.

Once he realized what she was doing, Dipper hopped off the bed and stumbled towards Mabel's side. "Are you sure you should be doing that? You could get seriously hurt."

"I-it's fine," Mabel shot back, hiding her sadness, pushing it all away to put on an acceptable front.

Dipper sat by his sister, unsure how to respond. However, the sound of a familiar car pulling up startled the twins.

Dipper's eyes quickly shot to the desk clock Mabel had decorated with foam owl stickers. The red LED readout read 4:30. Their mom only worked part time and was home by 4:20-ish, around the time he got back from his DDnmD sessions. Traffic must of delayed her.

"No," Mabel whispered. "Mom's home."

Thinking quickly, Dipper explained the first plan that came into his head. "I'll go get a towel from downstairs. You keep cleaning up the glass, just use toilet paper and as brush or something. We say you accidentally broke the snowglobe and that's why you're crying. She'll understand. It is a gift from grandpa."

Mabel gave a solemn nod and Dipper ran off, trying to ignore the new level of guilt that awakened when he mentioned Shermie.

Dipper's mother had arrived and was putting some groceries away in the cabinets and fridge. When Dipper came into her line of vision, she put the bag of bread down. "How's my Little Dipper?"

"Hah-ha...yeah...I'm okay," He stuttered out, trying to play off his awkwardness as embarrassment about his nickname, rather than the fact he definitely wasn't fine.

His mother smiled at Dipper and turned back to the groceries on the table. Dipper tried to sneak and tear off a bundle of towels from the roll, his mom stopped him.

"What do you need those for?"

"Oh...um….you know the snowglobe Mabel has?" Dipper said, his hands moving in frantic anxious motions.

"Yes," she replied, switching into stern and skeptical mother mode.

"Well...um...Mabel kinda knocked it over and it shattered. I'm getting a towel to wipe up the water. She's really upset and guilty about the whole thing, so maybe you shouldn't punish her more." Dipper rambled.

Their mother gave a defeated sigh. "Well, okay. I'm glad you two are taking the initiative and cleaning it up on your own."

Dipper thanked his mother and took a small bundle of towels back up to Mabel's room. She had already cleaned up the glass, but Dipper didn't notice how the shoebox she was previously using was neither on her desk or sticking out of the slightly too small trashcan. As they tried to dry up the wet stain on the carpet, Mabel shut down any attempts at conversation. When they were done, she quickly ordered Dipper out of her room. As guilty as it made him feel, there seemed to be nothing else he could do.

* * *

Dipper trudged back to his room. Sitting down at his desk, he opened up his own laptop. As he went to open the internet browser and see if there had been any responses to the email and to leave his own, however his chat application had a notification by it.

Opening it up, he saw a message from Monty: **RubyBlade** : Hey, dips, I can't believe I forgot to lend you egyptian tales book 3 when you came back. It completely slipped my mind. I'm sorry. Rebecca gave it back a while ago. I can bring it to school mon if you want.

Dipper swallowed. Egyptian Tales was a book series he'd really liked. It was so hard to him to afford new books, and Monty usually got them first. It had came out in May, but Rebecca had called dibs on reading it first. Then their vacation to Gravity Falls was announced and Monty didn't feel comfortable lending it to him as he vacationed.

The thing was, he had tried reading the old paperback copy of book 1 he owned one night when he was bored. Just now, after adventuring in Gravity Falls, it wasn't that entertaining. The plot was about two estranged siblings trying to save their father from the Egyptian god of chaos Set after he'd opened a portal to the magic realm to bargain with Osiris for their mother's life after she'd died in an accident with that very same portal. After the portal exploded and their father was captured as assumed a terrorist, their trenchcoat wearing uncle shows up and teaches them about magic and such...until well...something bad happens to him.

After experiencing such similar things in Gravity Falls, it was no longer escapism. Fear of being murdered by creatures that shouldn't exist, fighting a magic god of evil set on destroying the world, possession by otherworldly beings...that all hit to close to home for him.

Dipper replied: **BigDipper** : It's fine. I'm not really in the mood to read it right now anyway. You don't need to bring it.

Dipper sat and stared at the "message being typed" animation for an uncomfortably long time. He could almost imagine Monty sitting at his desk, typing out a message and deleting parts, trying to find the right words to say.

Eventually one came through: **RubyBlade** : Are you okay? You've been acting pretty weird lately. Alex and Daron say you've been super jumpy. You even cut the tricked warlock plotline. You used to love roleplaying Alex's patron god, we haven't seen him since you came back. I don't know if this is some "dying gods" plotline...it's just weird.

Dipper sighed. He'd tried to act normal, but his friends had noticed. Should he tell them? The avoidance with warlocks was because it was way to similar to Ford's situation. The tricked warlock was originally not a sympathetic villain, but then Charm Person was used on a servant and he'd run out of things to say. So he turned the evil warlock into a scholar who'd simply been tricked into making a deal with a god. The power corrupted him and now he was bent on shattering the veil between worlds. Alex's parton god was a Great Old One who was manipulating things behind the scenes. Both were too similar to Bill, so he'd tried to steer the plot away from it the best he could.

There wasn't anything he really could say without being more suspicious. Instead he'd clicked on a dropdown menu by his profile image. He hesitantly selected "Display as offline". Maybe Monty would assume he left as he was typing up the message. The "message being typed" alert was known to be extremely fickle anyway.

Minimizing the window, he opened up the web browser. He typed the URL for the email site, but didn't press enter. He didn't really want to deal this. There had to be something else he could do.

Oh! He still had math homework to do. He quickly made his way downstairs and brought his backpack up to his room. He started playing a videogame soundtrack from his laptop and hoped that the numbers would fill his head and block out the worries.

 _A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. Also the "Egyptian Tales" book series Dipper likes is actually The Kane Chronicles. It's really good and you should read it. The plot summary I gave is accurate, and yes, it is creepily similar to Gravity Falls in some ways._


	5. -'Til the days end

**Warnings for this chapter: Self-harming(referenced in the past and injuries shown,** event **not described in detail). PTSD Nightmares**

 _Dipper moved through the woods of Gravity Falls, the land covered in a strange ethereal mist. Every leaf, every piece of dust, even the forlorn wind he could feel passing through him. He was back in the mindscape. Below him, his quarry ran through the shadows. His own body, dressed in a rumpled suit. But...he had trouble placing it. Was it the outfit Bill wore in his body or the horrible suffocating outfit Pacifica forced him into….or maybe some combination of the two? Whatever it was, his mind didn't notice the discrepancy._

 _He continued chasing after Bill. But his own body was somehow always a few feet ahead of him and never faltered._

 _The duo emerged into a clearing. At the end of a cobbled path sat the Northwest Manor in all its usual glory. However, the excessive garden was absent and no light came from any of the overly large windows._

 _Dipper swooped down from the tree cover, in hot pursuit of Bill. As they entered through the open foyer, Dipper stopped cold in his tracks. There it was. If there was anything that haunted his nightmares more than Bill, it was_ those _. The enchanted trees. His eyes quickly flicked between the tortured poses of Mabel, Candy, and Grenda. The townsfolk were there too, in the same poses as they were turned to stone in. Heck, even Ford was there, his hands up by his head and curved the way he was when he turned to gold._

 _Dipper's eyes shot back up to the top of the staircase where Bipper stood, the journal tucked under his arm. Dipper shot over the heads of the wooden people, following Bipper through the large ornate doors at the top of the staircase._

 _Instead of emerging into some room in the Northwest Manor, Dipper entered into the cavernous storage room of Ford's underground bunker. He pursued Bipper through the many twists and turns. No matter how much he pushed his form, Bill always remained one turn ahead of him, just out of his view. The tunnels and paths seemed to branch off into infinity, but he always knew which way to turn in his endless chase._

 _However, after an uncountable number of turns, Dipper finally found Bill standing in the main cavern. The cryogenic tube was flung open as wisps of liquid nitrogen billowed out from it. As soon as Bipper noticed, he ran for the tube. Not noticing how strange this behavior was, Dipper swooped after him._

 _Standing in the tube, Bipper chucked the journal out from his hand where it slid across the smooth stone floor. Then right before Dipper was set to collide with his body, Bill suddenly vacated it. Dipper's body slumped over limp. Dipper's mind-spirit was moving so fast he collided with his now empty vessel of a body. He lurched back, hitting his head on_ _the glass backing off the tube. A strong throbbing pain started at the base of his head, but he didn't have much time to register it before the door of the tube slammed and an exhausting cold began to permeate his body._

 _He tried to force his eyes open to stare at his captor. There he was...Bill Cipher. Frost started to filling his vision will the air became more humid and painful in his nose. Why keep breathing? It was too much of a struggle. He might as well stop…._

 _Fire, wood, revenge, axes, noise, work, orders, stillness, solid chest, couldn't breathe, revenge, curse, blue fire, silver mirror….._

"Dipper. Dipper can you please read page 435. Dipper…"

Dipper jerked his head up with a start. Blinking his eyes, he saw that he was back in his English class. He must have fallen asleep. He'd never done that before. He'd been having _that_ dream all night last night. When he'd tried to close his eyes, it started again, just with little variations.

"Err, what page again?" he asked, sinking into his seat from embarrassment. In an honors class, most people didn't pay attend to the people around them, especially since the student who was supposed to sit in the seat next to him in the other row was Alexia, who was moved to the other side of the room. Mabel was in front of him, and if she noticed, she didn't say anything.

"Page 435, second paragraph from the top." Mrs. Elm replied. He could tell she was trying to keep her frustration in check.

Dipper looked down at the large open textbook in front of him. It was a collection of short stories and excerpts, much too easy for most of the honors class. But district standards required that Mrs. Elm teach all her classes from the same book. At least they were all realistic fiction, something much easier to handle.

He quickly flipped a couple pages forward and began to read, trying to bury himself in such an uninteresting story to take his mind off the nightmares.

The rest of the period was spent switching between different kids and having them read collections of paragraphs. As everyone was packing up to leave, Mrs. Elm walked over to Dipper's desk. "Please see me after class," she said.

Mabel shot him a wary look, but Dipper didn't respond. A few moments later the bell rang. The entire class started filling out. Mabel didn't start moving at first. "Just go," Dipper whispered,"I'll talk to you at lunch."

Mabel left with the rest of his class, while Dipper headed up to the front of the classroom where Mrs. Elm sat at her desk in the now quiet and empty classroom.

"Um, you wanted to see me," he asked nervously. Dipper was pretty sure this was about him falling asleep in class, but he was so nervous he couldn't really think straight.

"Dipper you've been acting a lot differently lately," Mrs. Elm said, her voice as calm as it usually was.

"Look, if it's about the falling asleep in class, I'm sorry okay. I stayed up really late last night," Dipper rambled.

"Dipper your old English teacher says you were a very eager reader. Especially of fantasy adventure books. Now you've stopped. A lot of times I catch you just staring off into space during silent reading. You also have been acting really jumpy. I can tell you come in tired to class a lot. If you need to talk about something, you can always go to the counselors. They don't even have to tell your parents if you don't want them to know."

Yes, Dipper knew all about confidentiality. He'd started doing research as soon as his mind started being affected by his adventures. However, if he came in ranting about interdimensional demons and the like, he'd be treated for hallucinations, which would just make things worse.

"Everything's fine," He fibbed.

He could tell from Mrs. Elm's face that she didn't really believe him, but she didn't push it. "Well, if you ever need anyone's help, remember you can always talk to someone."

"Yes. I understand," Dipper replied.

"Okay." The awkward silence settled around them for a moment, before Mrs. Elm got out a pad of paper and began writing. After she finished she ripped it out and handed it to Dipper.

"Here's a pass to your next class," she said.

"Thank you," Dipper replied as he left. He walked through the strangely silent and empty hallways, guilt twisting throughout him. But if he was going to tell anyone, it definitely shouldn't be a teacher first.

Argh...why did his life have to be so complicated. He thought it would just get easier after he defeated Bill. No, now he was keeping secrets and caught in a tangled web of distress. And there was no clear objective. Dipper just wanted to lie down by the lockers and sleep, from both physical tiredness and mental exhaustion.

When he came into second period late, everyone was already on the school laptops working. He handed his teacher the note and sat down. He avoided eye contact with Mabel and his friends, trying to distract himself with his essay.

Third period was a blur. They were working on a group project. Unluckily, or maybe luckily, Dipper was in a group without any of his friends or Mabel. The three of them worked on the parts of their projects. Then it was off to fourth period. But before he left, he did tell Mabel to meet him at their special place during lunch and that he wasn't sitting with his friends that day.

Dipper and Mabel sat down against one of the many storage units littered on the edges of the blacktop. In front of them was a half wall containing a planter. It was far enough way so that they had plenty of legroom, but they were obscured from view of anyone in the main lunch quad unless someone wanted to enter the band room, which anyone rarely did.

When Dipper arrived Mabel was already there. She had already taken out her food from her lunchbox, but she hadn't eaten anything. When Dipper plopped down, he could already feel the inappropriately somber mood for the bright clear blue sky.

"Dipper, what did Elm say to you?" Mabel set, poking her food dejectedly with her plastic fork.

"Oh. I'm not in trouble or anything. She just asked if everything was okay. I didn't tell her anything. She let me go, but gave me the usual spiel they do at the start of every year about how we can always go to the counselors if we have any problems. I didn't tell her anything." Dipper replied, he hadn't taken out his lunch yet and had just brought his legs up to his chest and stared the large bush in front of him.

"Dipper," Mabel said, turning to face him, her voice a tired croak. "Is everything okay? It's just, we haven't told anyone. Ford's headed back to Oregon to help with the people's recovery. So now they have to stop adventuring and fulfilling their dreams. Did you see how he had the golden streak on his hand the last time we chatted? Do you think that's from being turned to gold?"

"I don't know," Dipper replied, turning his gaze skyward,"It's just after I thought Bill was defeated, everything would be easier….but now…..I'm tried and jumpy. I don't really like reading any books I liked because they reminded me too much of my own life….and people are starting to notice. I didn't tell you, but a few weeks ago, Monty sent me a message about how he noticed how I was being more jumpy and changing my behavior."

Mabel sighed in agreement. She had put her mostly uneaten lunch back into her box.

"Mabel, did you bring a candy stash to school again and fill up on that?" Dipper asked, half teasingly to try to lighten the mood.

"No, it's not that. I just haven't been hungry lately."

"I get what you mean...it's just so many things just seem harder. The nightmares….having to keep everything a secret….and just the hopelessness. In Gravity Falls, the problem was always clear. Something you could outfight or outwit, even if it seemed impossible. Now this is just a new level of impossibility."

"Yeah. I guess so." Mabel brought her arms up to push her hair back. As she did, the sleeve of her sweeter slipped down a little bit. As she did, Dipper saw what looked like a cutt peeking out.

"Hey, did you hurt yourself?" he asked casually.

As soon as he said that, Mabel's posture became much more guarded and her eyes started flicking around. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Mabel, are you hiding something," Dipper warned.

Mabel didn't say anything. Her eyes continued flicking and her breathing visibly sped up.

"Mabel, what wrong?" Worry was creeping into Dipper's voice.

Still Mabel didn't respond. She got up and started to back away, as if she was about to break into a run.

Before she could, Dipper quickly leaped up and grabbed her by the wrist. Mabel tried to twist and get away, tears starting to well up in her eyes. With his other hand Dipper forced back her sleeve.

Her arm was crisscrossed mainly with sabs. There were a few white faded scars and a couple ugly red ones. All of them were sedated, like cuts from glass. They didn't look particularly deep, but they still greatly disturbed Dipper.

Before Dipper could ask, "Mabel, how did this happen?" She had already pulled her hand away close to her chest and resleeved it. But she did run. The tears started flowing down her face, but Mabel wasn't wailing. Instead she was mumbling something.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"

"Mabel, what happened?" Dipper repeated again. She couldn't of somehow hurt herself on the glass. The ages of the cuts varied too much. Why hadn't she told anyone?

"Mabel who did this to you?"

"I did."

Two simple words. The dread settled around Dipper. He couldn't say anything. His mind was still reeling, trying to process what she had said.

"It started after I found out about the shiftstone stuff, a month ago. When I was cleaning up the glass, I pricked my finger. I found that the pain started giving me clarity. Distracted me from the internal pain. Then when I couldn't sleep and the guilt was keeping me away, I got out the glass and cut. But I was always careful. I cleaned the cuts with water and used toilet paper to bind them until a scab formed. I never wanted to hurt myself, I just needed a distraction. I know I should've told you, but I was embarrassed, I was sacred."

Tears were forming in Dipper's eyes. He lunged forwarded and hugged his sister. They embraced. He now realized this was the first timed they'd hugged after they returned from Gravity Falls. Whenever he'd needed to comfort Mabel, he'd always overlooked such a simple gesture.

"Awkward sibling hug?" he whispered.

Mabel laughed, the tearstained laugh you do when a single beam of happiness shines through your sadness. She pulled back a bit so she could looked at Dipper.

"Pat. Pat," she said, although she was unable to use the monotone voice they usually used. The siblings exchanged pats and then sat back down.

Wiping their tears, a warmth Dipper hadn't experienced in a long time filled his chest. "You know what? If you ever feel a need to hurt yourself, come to my room. It doesn't matter if it's four in the morning or I'm doing homework, come to me. We can talk. We can hug. And if you don't want me to ask questions or tell anyone, I won't. It'll be your call from here on out."

Mabel smiled. The biggest smile she'd made in the long time. "Thank you."


	6. And if you lost it all

Dipper and Mabel were walking home. They had peeled away from the students gathering in the front of the school for the parents to pick them up, but they were still a long way from home.

It had been a few months after Mabel and Dipper's confrontation. It was a week before thanksgiving break and with the weather cooling, Dipper had taken to wearing a blue long sleeved shirt instead of his usual orange one. Mabel was satisfied with the same setup that sustained her throughout the summer. Today she was wearing a blue sweater with a silver and gold ball of yarn.

Suddenly, there was a flash of blue in a humanoid shape, stopping the twins in their tracks. In a few seconds, after the light faded, a humanoid figure was standing in front of them. They were around Ford's height. They were wearing a high-tech body suit of interconnected parts. It looked to be of a similar material to the time enforcers Dipper and Mabel had encountered over the summer. Instead of being overly buff, this figure was slim, but they held themselves in a way that commanded power.

On their head was a helmet. It was the shape of an oval that ended at a point. Two horns protruded from the top and curved upward into a point. Around the eye area there was a green visor, but it was too tinted to see anything through.

"Um, who are you?" Mabel asked, pointing at the figure with a perplexed look.

"Ah, I understand if you are perplexed," the figure said as they slipped a object onto their belt. Their voice didn't sound muffled, but there was probably some sort of voice modulator hidden in the suit somewhere as the voice sounded so generic Dipper couldn't even make out the age or gender of the speaker.

"I am part of Time Baby's personal guard. He has requested me to retrieve you without any oversight from the Time Anomaly Removal Enforcement Squad."

"Um, are we in trouble?" Dipper asked.

"Do you want to reward us for saving the day?" Mabel said, tripping over Dipper with her words.

"That I do not know. I was simply ordered to retrieve you and bring you to a meeting," the figure stated.

"So should we trust them?" Dipper asked Mabel.

"I don't know. I mean they're not being aggressive or trying to kidnap us. Besides, we won Globnar. That means we're like celebrities in the future or something!"

"I'm not exactly sure that's what that means, but I like your reasoning."

Dipper turned back to the figure. "Fine, we'll go with you."

"Good," they said, giving a slight nod as the figure pulled the object from the belt. Dipper could now see that is was just a standard issue time tape measure.

"Wait," Mabel said, "before we go, what's your name?"

"I'm afraid that's classified," they replied, as they imputed settings onto the time-tap.

"Well, Classified, it's good to meet you," Mabel said. Dipper couldn't tell if she was making a joke or if she genuinely didn't know that the figure's name was just a secret.

Classified looked up from their work. Dipper could tell they were smiling under their visor.

After they finished imputing the proper destination, Classified bent down to the twins' height and held out the hand with the main part of the time tape while holding on to the metal tip of the tape with her right hand.

The children exchanged one more cursory glance at each other before placing their hands on the device. They were nervous and apprehensive, but deep inside of them, they knew they wanted another adventure. Whatever Time Baby had in store for them, it had to be easier than the guilt, trauma, and worry that had been eating them up all fall.

* * *

The twins and Classified materialized into a bare metal room resembling the time-tanium prison they awaited globnar in. Without a word, they held up a gloved hand to a scanner on the wall. It beeped happily and Time Baby's sigil appeared. An exit opened up in the wall. Classified motioned for the twins to follow them.

They stepped into a large pristine white hallway. Light seemed to be coming from all surfaces, but it wasn't too bright to blind them. The perfection of the room did unnerve Dipper. Classified didn't look back or say anything. It felt improper for the twins to whisper anything to each other, so they simply heard only the echoes of their own footsteps.

After a few minutes of walking, they reach a bare wall with another scanner on it. Instead of unlocking the door, Classified turned suddenly turned toward the Pines, stopping them in their tracks.

"You are about to enter the throne room of Time Baby. You are to treat him with the utmost respect. My fellow guard members will also be stationed there. Do not make any movements that could be interpreted as acts of aggression. You are to be professional. You may ask questions and speak, but do not interrupt him."

Dipper and Mabel both gave solemn nods. Classified help up her hand to the scanner. It confirmed their identity and the wall fizzled away. The three of them entered a grand throne room. It was made of the same white material, but it had more decorations. Projectors of holographic star maps were littered throughout the room, but it was currently empty.

Occupying the end of the room was a large, but fancy, crib. Sitting inside was Time Baby, gnawing on some giant car keys. Five guards wearing the same setup as Classified stood perfectly with metal rods in their hands. There were only two guards on the left side of the crib, with an empty space between them. Dipper reasoned this was Classified's usual spot.

The trio approached the throne/crib. Classified held out their hand to order them to stop a good distance from the crib so they didn't have to crane their necks to make eye contact. They then positioned themselves in the empty space and drew their weapon.

This entire time Time Baby didn't look up from his work. Dipper could tell that Mabel was trying to suppress a laugh.

This continued long enough for it to become very awkward. Due to Classified's strict warnings about being respectful, neither of the twins attempted to make themselves known. Once it became too much, one of the guards coughed a little bit to get Time Baby's attention.

The powerful time god looked up to see Dipper and Mabel standing in front of them. He dropped the keys onto the space patterned sheets of his crib. Time Baby cleared his throat. "Er, sorry about that. Ah yes, the younger Pines twins. I have a very important mission. Well, it's more of a standard anomaly removal, but I cannot entrust the task to a normal team."

Dipper was about to ask "Why-" but Time Baby continued to speak without pausing, leaving Dipper to embarrassedly stifle his question.

"You two are to travel back 29 years. 29 years in Gravity Falls to be exact. You are to locate an anomaly we suspect to be in the general area of Greasy's diner. You will be transported slightly outside of the town. Your time tape will be specially modified to only take you there and back."

"But what if we say no?" Mabel asked. Dipper quickly shot into panic mode and silently did the silence motion across this throat. He could see that a few of the guards moved into a slightly more aggressive stance. However, Mabel remained oblivious to all of this as Time Baby contemplated for a moment.

"You have no reason to say no. This mission is considerably low risk. But if you are so insistent on defying me, I could always have you killed."

Dipper was still suspicious. If this mission was so low risk, why have two untrained kids fly under the radar to do it instead of just having it proceed normally? However, anything was better than death.

Dipper tried to put on his best 'oh, we are so honored' voice jumped in before Mabel could make things any worse. "I apologize for my sister's insolence. We would be honored to help you." Mabel glanced suspiciously

The giant baby gave a great big nod. One of the floating robots by one of the star maps zoomed over to the twins. " _Here is your specially calibrated time tape_ ," it said in a smoothly automated voice as it held out what looked like a normal time tape, although it had fewer scratches and general wear than the ones they'd stolen previously.

" _Just plug it into the console for destination calibration. We have a shuttle in the general area equivalent of your destination. We will track your location and be ready to pick you up when you activate the device to return to our current year._ "

Dipper took the device from the robot. Time Baby had returned to teething with his keys while the guards remained as motionless as statues.

"Well, I guess it's time for our next adventure sis," Dipper remarked with a smile.

"The mystery twins return - BOH YAH!" Mabel exclaimed, adding excited air punches at the last words.

Dipper headed over to the console where the robot came from while Mabel followed him. He glanced at the complex buttons covering the panel and quickly found a completely bare spot the size of the time tape. "Hey, Mabel, before I put the time tape in, grab onto me in case it activates right away." The robot had turned dormant again and Time Baby remained oblivious, so no one offered to correct him.

"Bop," Mabel said as she grabbed his left forearm. Dipper placed the device in the slot. As soon as the time tape made contact, Dipper could feel electricity zipping up his arm until it consumed his entire body. It wasn't painful. It just felt like his entire body had fallen asleep. Once the buzz had spread up to his eyes, the world faded away. Even as it did, he could still feel Mabel's firm grasp on his arm.

* * *

 _Vroom!_ Before Dipper even opened his eyes he could smell and feel a car rushing past him. As he landed on the hard asphalt the time tape slipped out of his hand.

Dipper quickly got up and brushed off his clothes. Nothing felt hurt, he was just a little sore. After he helped Mabel to her feet, he was finally able to look around. He seemed to be on the road heading to the Mystery Shack. He could see the lights of the town off in the distance to his left. It was night and the stars were twinkling overhead.

Dipper also saw the crushed time tape slightly behind the front wheel of the car that had almost run them over. He swore under his breath and scooped it up to examine it. The front casing of the device had bent inward, but carefully lifting it up revealed that the internal devices were intact.

Before he could relay this information to Mabel, Dipper had to jump out of the way to avoid being banged in the head by the opening driver side door.

The person that stepped out looked to be in their late teens, wearing a raggedy flannel shirt and a dark green windbreaker. Their hair was even messier than what Dipper usually hid under his hat and he could tell the driver hadn't combed it in weeks.

They were glancing around, trying to see if they'd hit anything. They had taken out a flashlight and were illuminating patches on the ground. When they finally turned around, Dipper's stomach dropped as if he was on a roller coaster.

The man standing in front of them looked almost just like Ford or Stan. But that didn't make any sense. Neither of the elder Pines twins had set foot in Gravity Falls until they were older. Besides, this young man didn't wear glasses, but he also had a cleft chin growing in.

"Oh, god!" he exclaimed. His voice was similar to Ford's but it was a lot more anxious and wobbly. As he rushed towards them, Dipper was able to get a better look at his hands. Five fingers. So not Ford.

"I didn't hit you did I?"

Mabel must have noticed the stranger's odd appearance, as she was struck silent. However, Dipper managed to speak up. "No, we're fine," he said as he put the broken time tape into his vest pocket.

"Good," the driver said, leaning down to his height "Name's Shermie." As he reached out his hand to shake his future great-nephew's hand, Dipper's mind felt like it was stretching itself across the entire state of Oregon.

So the man in front of them was Shermie. Wow. It felt so weird to be seeing his grandfather only a few years older than Wendy. Why was he heading out to Gravity Falls? Probably to see Stan. Considering he'd never heard of their great uncle until they were shipped off to Gravity Falls, it did make sense why he would have never heard any stories about the event.

"Hey kid you okay?"

"Uh, yeah, sorry 'bout that." Dipper gave his head a brisk shake and returned the handshake.

"So what are two kids like you doing outside of a small town at night?"

Mabel had walked up to stand by her brother, still dumbstruck. They exchanged glances, but they were both able to summarize they were screaming the same thing inside, " _HELP! WHAT DO WE DO?_ "

After the stunned silence had gone on for long enough, Shermie interpreted it as it being too hard or personal, rather than just having no idea what could possibly be said that wouldn't cause a time paradox. "Hey, it's fine if you don't want to talk about it. Ma always had to keep reminding me that not everyone is always willing to share what is bothering them."

They stood around in awkward silence for a few more moments until Shermie picked up the conversation again. "I'm heading out of town. Trying to see my brother. If you want to go in that direction, I could always take you."

"Well we're actually trying to-" Mabel began, motioning back towards the lights of Gravity Falls.

"Thanks. We'd love if you could help us get going in that direction. But we don't want to bother you," Dipper quickly spluttered out, stepping over Mabel's words.

Shermie narrowed his eyes in suspicion but opened the back car door. "Hop on in. You're gonna have to move some of the stuff I have piled back there."

The twins climbed into the back. Dipper had to push a pile of blankets on his seat down onto the floor, removing all legroom and forcing him to tuck his legs under him. A raggedy blanket was spread over both seats. On the other seat, Mabel did manage to find legroom between the assorted paper grocery bags.

Shermie hoped into the front seat and started the car. As soon as the rumbling of the engine was loud enough to hide his whispers and the car had began to move, Dipper leaned in to speak with his sisters. "Okay, don't freak out. I have a plan. This is 29 years in the past. So there are probably portal supplies down in Ford's basement. There has to be so portal supplies that could work in there. I say we use grand- Shermie to get us close enough then we sneak it."

Mabel responded with a brisk "Yeah we're doing this" nod.

However, their whispering was interrupted by Shermie from the front trying to make small talk. "Hey, so I know I picked you hitchhikers up, but could you like at least tell me your names?"

Without even hesitating Mabel gave her real name. Upon realizing the possibly disastrous consequences, Dipper's mind went into panic mode, mental alarm bells wailing in his head, drowning out his thoughts. "Um, Tyrone," he replied, stating the first name that he could make out over his panic.

"Heh, Mabel, that's a nice name," Shermie responded.

They sat in awkward silence for a for more moments. With nothing to distract him, Dipper could only focus on his brain running wild and catastrophizing. While he suffered in silence and watched the shadows of the trees go by, Mabel started rummaging through some of the bags in front of her seat.

After a little bit, Dipper heard Mabel say, "Did you make this?" and turned to see her holding up what looked to be a rough wooden carving of a human in a neutral pose. Its face was featureless and it was a lot more simple than the minis Shermie made for Dipper, but it was still astonishing to think someone could carve that out of a block of wood.

"Oh. The wood figure?" Shermie said not taking his eyes off the road and keeping his tone light. "Yeah. Wood carving's a little hobby of mine. Haven't been able to make more since I got kicked out. Pa always said that I wouldn't go anywhere with 'shmabby pamby' art stuff and I should focus being more like my older brother." Shermie paused, letting the somber addition to his ranting settle, before picking it back up with his usual conversational tone, "That not why I got kicked out. I mean, Pa was already tired of me. And with Ford off the map. And Stan well…. Okay, the fact he didn't think I could bring in money and was too honest to run the pawn shop probs' didn't make him more lenient."

Dipper and Mabel exchanged looks. They hadn't really been told anything. In fact, any stories about their family beyond their father's childhood on the Pines side. Dipper didn't really know anything beyond how Shermie had their father a young age, just like their father had them when he was young.

They couldn't really think of much to say. With tangible awkwardness, anxiety, and the twins wanting to comfort Shermie but not knowing how filling the car, Shermie tried to diffuse the situation. "Eh, sorry about that. Guess I do start ranting a lot. I shouldn't dump my problems onto you," assuming the awkwardness came from telling two strangers about your life problems.

Shermie's attempt at returning the atmosphere to cordial didn't work. Dipper turned back to the rushing trees, while Mabel started turning the figure over in her hands. Shermie just kept his eyes fixed on the road and didn't try starting any more conversations.

Luckily they reached the entrance to the path leading up to the shack in only a few moments. The three Pines exited the car. "Well, I'll leave you here," Shermie said, "I wish I could be of more help, but there's not much I can do."

"We understand," Dipper said as Shermie headed off towards the shack. He had to grab Mabel's arm to keep her from rushing off. He quickly did the _"shush"_ gesture and pulled her behind the bushes so they wouldn't get caught breaking in.

* * *

Shermie nervously sighed and drummed his fingers against his leg to calm down. Those kids definitely were weird. Two kids just showing up on the side of the road. Not asking too many questions. They were much too well dressed to be runaways like him.

Shermie was so lost in this thoughts he didn't notice the signs lining the path announcing the presence of some "Murder Hut", something that directly contradicted his brother's requests to be left alone.

Shermie breathed in and braced himself as he stood on the porch of what signs were deeming "The Murder Hut". _"Well that's certainly odd_ ," he thought, expecting some secluded cabin in the woods filled with books and other naturalist equipment.

As he held his hand over the door, poised to knock, he hesitated. _"You haven't seen your brother since the funeral. Then he told you to stop calling him and just leave him alone,"_ a voice said in Shermie's head.

"It's okay. He's family. He won't bite," He said aloud, trying to argue with himself. This was to let able Shermie sideline all doubt for now and give the door three hard knocks.

"What the- okay, I know I didn't put a closed sign up, but can't you use your common sense? Oh and if you want a refund, I _do_ have a no refunds sign up- so just go home," a voice said, accompanied by some scraping and scuffling, leading Shermie to imagine that whomever it was, they were approaching the door. They did sound a bit like Ford as if he had a cold. But the way the voice sounded meant nothing if the words didn't sound one bit like Ford.

The door opened and Shermie was surprised to see that it was, in fact, Ford(he had mentioned an assistant on the phone several times). Ford seemed just as surprised to see him, quickly hiding his hands behind his back and then making his astonished face go blank.

"Ah, Sherman," Ford said, his voice sounding normal again. "Er...what brings you here? No really, why are you here?"

"Um, Ford. I know you said just to leave you alone after the funeral….but I really have no other place to turn. Pa kicked me out and well…."

Without even letting Shermie continue, Ford cut him off, his face morphing into confused sympathy. "Pa kicked you out? What in God's name- Okay you got to tell me the story. Come on in."

Ford moved out of the way so Shermie could enter, still keeping his hands nervously hidden behind his back.

"Hey, before I sit down, can I go use the bathroom?" Shermie asked meekly. He did really need to.

"Yeah," Ford replied flippantly. "Just keep heading straight and turn left."

Shermie nodded and walked through the opening room. Different assorted sciencey things were pushed into piles to make a couple walk ways, while some items were set out on a folding table with price cards on them.

"What's all this?" Shermie called back as Ford was trailing behind him.

"Oh, the shop," Ford looked uncomfortable. His voice sounded a bit off, but Shermie dismissed his suspicions. It had been a year since they'd spoken, and even longer than that since they'd had a proper conversation. "Yeah. Started running low on money. Thought I could sell some prototypes. Give tours. Nothing big."

Shermie nodded and headed into the bathroom while Stan went into the kitchen to prepare some coffee.

* * *

Dipper and Mabel had snuck over to where Dipper had found a separate entrance to the basement. As he tried to find the exact location, Mabel had peaked into the shack through a window. She had a good view of the kitchen where Stan (even though he was wearing black six-fingered gloves, she knew it was Stan) was serving coffee to Shermie who was sitting hunched over his drink. She could hear their conversation, even if it was muffled by the glass.

* * *

"Thanks, Ford," Shermie said, accepting the steaming mug.

Ford sat down in his own chair. "So what happened? What in the world do you do that made Pa disown another son."

Shermie flinched a little bit. Ford was talking about Stanley very casually. Everyone had always acted like his other brother didn't exist. He didn't even learn about Stan's very existence until he was in second grade. He'd gotten and bad score on a test and some cruel kid said, " _Looks like the Pines turned out another idiot._ " He'd come home crying and confused. Then his mother explained how the kid wasn't talking about Ford who was excelling in academics, but another child.

Stanley had always been like some spirit to him. They'd never really said much more about him, until the funeral. That had been brutal. Shermie didn't really like to think about that.

"Well...you know Eleanor? My girlfriend." -Ford's face didn't betray anything.- "I kinda got her pregnant."

Shock filled Ford's eyes, while Shermie snuck lower in his seat, his cheeks burning with embarrassment as he decided not to dance around the issue and just state it plainly.

"Now I don't want to leave her and the baby. But Pa kicked me out. Called me another disgrace. He probably wouldn't do that on his own, but he already despised me for wanting to go to 'hippie' art school. So yeah. No job. No home. Eleanor's dad is letting her stay and watching Daedalus, but I need a job."

"And the kid?" Ford asked. "Are you gonna keep it?"

"Yeah. Ellie and I already talked about that. We were even thinking of naming it Icarus if it's a boy- to complete the set."

"The set?"

Shermie smiled a bit sheepishly. He didn't know if Ford was testing him or just not understanding his wording. There was no why Ford could forget one of his favorite myths. Or maybe he was trying to cheer him up. Telling a story about a faraway time or land did always help him. Sometimes when he was having a tough day at school when he was young and Ford was free, they'd just call each other and talk. Not about life, though. About history, myths, or even the book he was reading recently.

"Well, you know how when you started looking for anomaly hotspots you managed to track down a polydactyl cat as a parting gift. You named him Daedalus. He's doing fine." Shermie picked up the mug and moved it over a bit. He then started moving his finger around the moisture ring left behind, intensely focusing his eyes on that while he continued speaking.

"Well, you know how the Icarus myth was always your favorite. You always told me a different moral than what I was taught in English- boy did that get me in trouble. It's not about hubris or something, it's about how determination and need can push the limits of humankind, and how when you put your own greed over logic and reason, you will fall."

Shermie looked up and saw Ford glancing to the side as if he'd said something to insult him. As soon as Ford saw that Shermie had looked up, he stopped and gave his head a clearing shake. "Ah right," Ford said, not really elaborating, "So was there any reason specifically you came out here?"

"Well, it's just….I was wondering if I could sign on as your assistant. I mean, you said you already got one, an old college friend. I haven't seen him around, though. Didn't you say he lived with you? I mean, I can help with sketching and organizing. I don't know too much about the naturalist stuff you do out here, but you could always teach me." Shermie's voice had become more eager. He'd always begged Ford to let him come to Gravity Falls. Ford's reply had always been _"You need to finish school first._ " He'd just finished school and now had been kicked out of his home. There wasn't much more school he could do with no scholarships and no money.

Shermie braced himself for the excuses he was expecting. He got ready to rebuttal with a collection of pre-prepared arguments he'd come up with in the car. However, Ford's reply wasn't close to the situation he'd imagined. "No, I can't…I just can't." Ford's eyes were nervous, like a cornered rabbit, "You can't stay. My old assistant, he had to leave. He got hurt. The stuff I'm looking into is dangerous. He's not even with his family now. It's complicated. I can't help you. I can barely afford to take care of myself, let alone three more mouths."

A primal fire burned in Shermie. He'd driven all the way out here! To see his brother, the brother who'd always comforted him. Always made time for him. Then more than a year ago, before the funeral by a few months, he'd stopped answer calls. Then at the funeral, Ford just told him to stop calling! To just leave him alone!

With a start, Shermie stood up. Ford followed, still looking cornered, as to not be left in a vulnerable position. "ARGH! I can't believe you! I- I always looked up to you. You were the smart kid. The successful one! I was the one who could barely get a B. Who spent to long with his head in the clouds, dreaming. You always said that once I finished school I could join you! I could help you sketch stuff, be an assistant." He stared Ford down(even if Ford was taller than him), malice filling his eyes.

"But now that I made a mistake, you don't want me. I'm just as reckless, just as selfish, just as irresponsible as- as Stanley." His voice cracked on the last word, letting the cursed name settle around them. Tears were streaming down his face. He still loved Ford. Ford was always the one he sought the validation of. He'd honestly give approval where it was due, and give suggestions when it wasn't. He wouldn't scorn him like Pa or pity him like Ma.

"Sherman, wait," Ford said, reaching out a hand.

"It's fine," Shermie replied bitterly. "I know when I'm not wanted," he said as he stalked off, not meeting Ford's eyes.

Shermie could tell that Ford had gotten up to follow him. When he reached the entrance room, Ford stood directly behind him as he was reaching for the door. "Okay fine," Ford said, his voice bitter and defeated.

Shermie dropped his hand that was reaching for the door handle and turned around. He was still crying. He was still bitter. But the angry exterior fell away when he saw Ford's face. It was pitiful. He could see the fear, as if it was Ford, rather than Shermie who was begging the other for a place to stay.

"You- you can stay," Ford choked out. "Just- only for a couple nights. My assistant- I still have his family's phone number. They live out in Palo Alto. You could probably get a job out there. And they could help you. They might hate me for what happened but…"

Shermie broke into a tear-stained smile. "Thank you. Thank you," he repeated and he lunged forward to hug his brother. Ford hesitated for a moment but soon returned the embrace.

"Come on kid," Ford said, eventually wiggling himself out from the hug. "Let's go watch TV or something. We really need to calm down."

* * *

Mabel and Dipper ducked under the window looking into what would soon become the Mystery Shack gift shop as Shermie and Stan walked by. Mabel had begun to watch their grandfather and Stan's conversation from the get-go, with Dipper only half listening. However, once the argument began, Dipper had already found the separate basement entrance and was going to tell Mabel, but he became just as captivated. They then followed the scene to the gift shop.

"God, I can't believe I never thought about grandpa and how the entire Stan/Ford thing went down for him. And like how he had Dad really young...I just never really thought about the implications and now I feel really bad and just-"

"Yeah, I know," Dipper whispered back, "But we gotta go. We can talk about it later, but I found the entrance." He grabbed Mabel's hand and pulled under the porch to where he pulled back a square of false grass to reveal what looked like a standard external cellar entrance.

Dipper opened up the door to reveal a dark tunnel that was only barely tall enough for the twins to fit through. "Argh, forgot how dark it was," Dipper said, facepalming.

"You have any light?" he asked Mabel. She shook her head.

"That's okay. It's straight down. And with Stan here, that means Ford should have all his portal supplies."

The two of them made their way down the tunnel. After walking for a while, Dipper felt a dead end (He'd been holding his hands out on the way down. Once they'd gotten farther than a few steps, the twins had been plunged into total darkness). He quickly found the button that caused a sliding door to open.

The twins walked into Ford's basement lab. Ford had shown Dipper where he'd kept his supplies and the emergency entrance/exit after they'd gone out and Dipper had ended up revealing his real name. Shortly after that, Ford had started taking an interest in showing Dipper around his lab. Little did he know it was because Ford was interested in asking Dipper to become his apprentice.

While Mabel was still looking around the lab, Dipper rushed off to one of the supply closets. Hopefully, Ford's scattered organization system was exactly the same 30 years ago. If it wasn't there was no way he could find what he was looking for.

Dipper gently moved a blowtorch out of the way a pulled out a small cardboard box. Mabel had stepped up behind him. With anticipation building in his chest, he opened it to reveal three roles of black electrical tape neatly place in a row. He had to resist the urge to cheer and jump in the air, as the small bit a fear in the back of his mind about not being able to get home that had been festering since they landed faded. Instead of cheering, Dipper sat down cross-legged and pulled the broken time tape out of his vest. As he worked on smoothing out the cover with his hands and then sealing it with bits of electrical tape, Mabel sat down next to him.

After a few minutes, a bit of cursing, and a good amount of wasted tape, Dipper was finally ready to wrap one long piece of tape around his handiwork. However, only a few seconds after he'd finished, Dipper could feel the time tape heating up in his hand and blue electricity starting to form around it. It was slower than normal activation(as in not instant) but as soon as he saw it his heart started pounding a mile a minute.

"Quick, Mabel, grab on." He panicked, resisting the urge to throw the time tape away from him. Mabel quickly lunged for his shoulder right as the tingling was reaching his shoulder.

As the tingling reached his eyes and the world faded away, Dipper was relieved that he could still feel Mabel's hand tightly gripping his shoulder. Other than that, he didn't have any "time" to worry about how was currently traveling through time with a haphazardly repaired device that had auto activated.

* * *

That thought was able to form in Dipper's head as a new scene faded in. However, he was able to push it away because he saw that he and Mabel were now sitting on the floor of a hyper futuristic ship. They were it the back of the ship, which was basically empty. To their right was were to pilot seats. Directly in front of them was a screen mounted on a wall, while one of Time Baby's guards (possibly Classified) stood to the side of it.

Dipper and Mabel quickly got up. As the situation dawned on Dipper more, the couple moments of anxiety free thoughts he'd managed faded. "Oh, I'm so sorry," He rapidly explained to the guard. "We couldn't find the anomaly. The time tape got wrecked. I did find a way to fix it. We tried to keep out of sight, but our grandfather did see us and talk to us, but we're still alive, so I don't think anything too bad happened. Yeah….we couldn't find the thing you wanted. The device activated once I could repair it and now we're here."

The guard's posture didn't change at all. If they had any reaction to the news, it was hidden under their mask. Instead, they held out the palm of their hand over the screen where Time Baby's symbol flashed over it. Once they'd lowered their hand, the twins could Time Baby on the other side of the screen, still in his throne crib.

"My current analysis shows there were no unnoticed variables in my protections- so I have to say congratulations," Time Baby stated.

"What do you mean congratulations?" Dipper asked, sounding indignant.

"Well-" Time Baby paused for a bit as the hour glass on his forehead flashed some different colors, "There wasn't really an anomaly. I just needed this exact version of you to go back and met with your grandfather, so see the right things. These events will influence your future decisions while also setting a few variables right to make the same version of you capable of going back. That's what all your trips back in time where. There's only one dimension where Bill is fully defeated. Due to the anomalous nature of my presence in this timeline, the Oracle tasked me with running projections and then changing the variables of this dimension to be the one where Bill is defeated. Of course, that would protect me. There's a lot more events in there. It's very hard to put into words. The nonlinear nature of events can happen in when you introduce time travel makes it hard to explain things."

"The exact same sapients with the same experiences and knowledge will always make the same choices. That's why it's possible for my species to fairly accurately predict events and how time travel will change them. All your experiences with time travel were engineered to bring about the timeline where Bill was defeated. Expect for this one. This timeline meddling was unnecessary, but the Oracle begged me to grant it to you. I understand this can be challenging for your species to comprehend, but this is really the best I can explain it."

"Uh, so free will isn't real? We can't really change anything," Mabel said, trying to make sense of Time Baby's speech.

"No, I don't think that's what he meant," Dipper replied, thinking hard, "I think Time Baby just means that all the times we've time traveled were to make us the people who would defeat Bill." He didn't know exactly how each situation led into the other, but that was what he gathered.

"So we'll always do the same thing regardless?" Mabel said, sounding perplexed.

"Uh...just leave it," Dipper said. He had trouble really understanding it. It would be even more challenging to explain it. "Basically the one thing you need to know is that there wasn't an anomaly. Time Baby just wanted us to see grandpa."

"Oh, okay," Mabel said, nodding. She still looked like she didn't believe her brother.

"Thank you for explaining, Mason," Time Baby said. Dipper flinched a bit at the use of his real name by a relative stranger. "You're currently over where you were summoned from. Your device will set itself to remain here and send you back seconds after you left. That's all."

Dipper and Mabel both nodded. After Mabel grabbed Dipper's empty hand, the time tape in his other hand started buzzing at normal speed and soon the sidewalk in his own time faded back in.

"Wow. Just wow," Mabel said, "That was confusing and-"

"Yeah, we have so much to talk about," Dipper remarked, finishing her sentence.

"But we're gonna tell Grandpa everything."

"Yeah, once we have a solid plan. I have a couple ideas. We'll take them over and then we'll tell everyone."

Mabel gave a firm nod as she could feel the guilt she'd held inside her since the end of the summer lessening a bit.

A/N: _Hope you enjoyed this chapter. It's one of my longest yet and I couldn't wait to write it. We only have 2 more to go. The time travel plot allowed me to do some well-needed worldbuilding. It was also the only way I could think of turning Dipper and Mabel's opinion of telling Shermie. I don't think the "why" is the most solid of a plot point, but it's the best I could come up with. Also, the timeline is a bit off, but with younger!Shermie it makes more sense why he never figured out Stan's secret. And it leaves the option for more angst._

 _Spring break is starting on Monday for me, however, I will be focusing on a long one shot rather than another After The War chapter. It's not Gravity Falls, though. I hope you guys all understand._


	7. The Dead are All Living

_A/N:_ _Sorry this chapter took so long to make. I stopped to write the Story of Tomorrow, and since I had pushed myself to write that quickly, I decided to take a break. Then I did other stuff. Mostly watching musical bootlegs. And then after writing a couple pages, some of my friends got me to read Homestuck. And I also worked on some DnD stuff. But here we are, and it's time for the second to last chapter._

 **Warnings: Pov character panic attack**

"I'm so glad you kids suggested we spend Thanksgiving at Dad's house," Icarus said. It had been a week since the twin's last supernatural adventure. During dinner, that evening Dipper brought up the idea of spending Thanksgiving with Shermie and his wife. Both of their parents had readily agreed, remarking how nice it was that spending a summer in Gravity Falls helped them appreciate their family more. The grunkles were a bit more hesitant, but the twins did manage to persuade them to help with their plan.

"Oh yeah," Dipper absently mindedly replied, hoping that his parents would get the message and allow him to return to the history book he had picked up from the library before the start of the trip. He just did want to talk about it. Still, he didn't feel as relieved as he should. There was still a voice in his head telling him he could back out now and no one would be the wiser.

"Dear," Dipper's mother warned, "can't you see he's busy?"

"Okay. Sorry." Icarus began fiddling with the radio, trying to find a good channel. Mabel continued knitting a sweater for their grandfather, completely in the zone.

* * *

By the time the Pines had reached Shermie's house, the sun had almost set. Icarus parked his car and the family grabbed their bags and stood on the gravel drive away. Below them spread a small residential neighborhood. Shermie's house was about the same size (one story, three bedrooms), but it was much more rustic looking. It also had a much more personal touch than the same suburban houses they passed on the way up. Seeing it now, it reminded Dipper of a much more elegant version of the Mystery Shack.

"Here, Dip-dot," Mabel said, handing him her bag, "You can carry this. I need to carry Waddles."

Dipper silently took her bag while Mabel coaxed Waddles from his blanket in the backseat.

Soon the four (five if you count Waddles) of them were standing on Shermie's porch. Beth rang the doorbell and they were soon greeted with hugs and kisses from Shermie and his wife Eleanor. After their parents were ushered inside, now Shermie and Eleanor could turn their attention to the twins.

And when Dipper saw his grandfather, he almost dropped his bags. He just looked so much like the Stan twins now that he was older. He had the same hair as Ford, minus the silver streak. Shermie was about 18 years younger and hadn't gone through as much, you could clearly see that, but he was just so similar. The only other big difference was that Shermie was about a head shorter than the twins. He even had similar glasses now, although they were perched on the top of his head. This wasn't much of a change from the last time they met, but still, it was shocking.

Eleanor pretty much also looked the same, that is to say, weird. Her short spiky hair was dyed bright blue. Even though you could tell she was old, she had a young energy, if that made any sense. Over a paint splattered smock she was wearing one of the sweaters Mabel had knitted for her. She also was wearing a collection of different talismans around her neck.

"Oh, so this is the pig your parents told us about?" Eleanor asked, looking down at Waddles, "He's so adorable!"

"I'm honestly surprised that Ford let you keep a pig all summer. He's not really a big fan of farm animals from what I remember," Shermie said, scoffing light-heartedly.

Eleanor had already picked up the pig and was cooing at it. "He could probably say out in the yard with the chickens," Eleanor said to Mabel after she was done dotting over Waddles and put him back down, "I've been told he's not an outdoor pig, but since Bast has her kits, we wouldn't want to disturb them."

"BAST HAS KITTENS?" Mabel squealed.

"Yeah. The girl gave birth recently. I knew you'd love to see them, but you have to make sure to be quiet when you see her. She's in an alcove in our room, so you don't have to whisper in the house, but you need to stay quiet while you're near her."

Mabel gave an excited nod to acknowledge it. Eleanor then led her granddaughter to the chicken pen to the back of the house where Waddles could stay. This left Shermie and Dipper alone.

"So-huh, how's life been for you squirt?" Shermie asked.

God. This was so awkward. And Shermie's voice still sounded like Ford and- argh! This was just so weird. Dipper thought he be used to time travel and supernatural adventures, it had never affected his normal family before. Now the way he saw his grandfather was completely different. On one hand, he wanted to hug Shermie and tell him, through tears, everything. But on the other hand, he wanted to run down the hill and never speak with Shermie- or anyone- ever again.

Dipper knew both of these options were extremes. What he really needed to do was play it cool until he and Mabel could explain everything.

"Yeah, things have been fine- it's just the same old stuff," Dipper fibbed, being as vague as possible.

"Okay, how was the summer with Ford. He's been so distant since- well- how was it?"

Luckily Dipper was saved from answering by the return of Eleanor and Mabel, smiling much wider than she had in months.

As soon as the two of them made eye contact, Mabel's smile fell to a small slightly forced one, as if she'd remembered a great weight hanging from her shoulders.

"Ellie, we should probably go inside and chat with Icarus and Beth, we don't want your tea to boil over," Shermie said to his wife.

Eleanor nodded. "You kids can go unpack in the side room, we've already set some beds up there."

As their grandparents went to sit down with their parents on the lumpy couches, the twins gathered their bags and went to set in one of the bedrooms that they called the side room.

In reality, it was a storage room for some of Shermie's paintings that hadn't sold yet. Enough of them had been leaned against the wall in the hallway to barely fit two mattresses and the twin's suitcases. After Mabel sat down to start spreading out her pillows and blankets, Dipper entered and made sure to close the door behind him.

As soon as he did, Dipper had to stop himself from hyperventilating. "I- I can't do this!"

Mabel stopped and looked up at him.

"I can't do this- I can't tell him. I know I- we made a plan, but I just wanna back out now. Maybe Ford was right. This is too dangerous. What if they don't let us go back to Gravity Falls? What if they tell the government? What if a "weirdness rush" disrupts the natural habitats of the anomalies?" Each sentence was broken up by sputtering broken gasps for air. His heart was pounding like the sound of a thousand drums. His body was shaking against his sense of self. In, out, in, out, in, out. Like being inside a 3D movie but not wearing cheap disposable glasses.

He grasped for something to hold on to, anything. Anything to keep him from drowning. His hand grasped the door knob. He pushed it into the palm of his hand, anchored himself with the pain. Now he couldn't even make words or form coherent enough thoughts. He felt moisture on his face, he must be crying.

"Dipper, are you okay?"

He must be dying. That was the one coherent thought that could make it above the chaos.

Two hands gripping his free wrist. A worried voice. "Dipper calm down, you're safe- it's okay."

A hug. Now everything was tighter. His chest was couldn't expanded in its hurried spasms. He needed to escape. Maybe then he wouldn't die. But his heart was so off beat, it burned. This had to be a heart attack.

He pushes her away and stumbles forward, falling onto the mattresses. He lands partially on an open suitcase, but he's barely aware of the pain through the layers of fuzz.

Now he can't move. How long has it been? The storm quiets, now he's in the eye of the hurricane.

They're going to find him. _Why are you like this? What kind of weirdo are you?_

 _I was going to tell you something._

Why did he have to do this? This was too much. He should've just died to defeat Bill. He wasn't strong enough for this.

Now he couldn't move. He could feel the pain, feel the fear, but it was like he was separated from everything- no worse. Trapped.

There was a tentative hand on his side. But it wasn't like before. It wasn't another rock thrown into a storm. It was more like the doorknob, anchoring him.

His heart slowed. The storm lessened. He had run out of tears to cry. He was left bare on the rocks, exposed.

"D-dipper? Are you okay?"

Dipper forced himself to curl up in a ball on his mattress. He was so exhausted. He just wanted to curl up and sleep. He looked up to see Mabel kneeling in front of him, pure terror in her eyes, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Uh yeah, I'm fine now," Dipper choked out. His tongue felt like sandpaper.

He could see Mabel was calming down now, whipping her tears away with the sleeves of her sweater. She cautiously approached Dipper, crawling on her hands and knees.

"Uh- it's okay to get close now….how long was I out?"

Mabel now sat cross legged on her own mattress. "Uh, 15 minutes maybe. Mom and Dad probably- hopefully- didn't notice."

Dipper just felt exhausted. Maybe he would sleep, maybe he wouldn't, but he just wanted to curl up under the blankets.

"Can I get you anything?"

"Some water would be nice- I kinda want some comfort food right now, but you know-"

"We can't tell anyone why."

Dipper let the mournful silence settle for a moment.

"Oh god we're gonna need and lie- and we have to change our plan and-" Dipper could feel his heart rate rising again. He started gripping the mattress till his knuckles were white to calm him down.

"I know! I'll say you stayed up all night studying- we did have a test yesterday. I mean I know you didn't need to study, but our parents don't really know that. So now you're just resting- that'll work. I'll message the grunks right now that it's gonna be delayed."

Dipper nodded. That seemed to work. He should probably read something to get his mind of everything. Sleeping might just induce a panic attack (he's pretty sure that's what had just happened). "Just message them, don't start a call. I don't really want to be involved. I don't wanna think about it much, it might just make it worse."

Using all his strength, Dipper pulled his history book from his suitcase and flipped open to where the bookmark was.

* * *

Mabel booted up the messaging software- ignoring the twisting guilt in her stomach. She felt like she had failed Dipper somehow.

 _ShootingStar:_ _hey. change of plans. dipper had a panic attack. he's ok tho. just resting. were gonna have to change our plans now tho._

 _SeaGrunks: Is your brother ok? -F_

 _SS : I guess so. he just got super stressed about telling grandpa n everyone. he's resting now._

 _SG : You should probably follow through on the plan your own. If science hasn't marched on in this dimension since that one psychology class I should have paid better attention to, he's in a very vulnerable state. You should probably tell Shermie yourself. Then he can be comforted by the rest of his family and the source of stress will be gone. -F_

 _SG: Mabel, I dont think this is the best idea. But ford insisisted- argh, however it's spelled -s_

The twisting guilt increased in speed. She didn't want to go behind her bro's back, but Ford presented a well thought out argument- like he almost always did.

Mabel's hands hovered over the keyboard. She started to type out a message agree to Ford's plan, but she deleted it after a few words. She didn't know what to do. She knew what Dipper would say, but he was scared.

Mabel was scared too.

 _SS: I don't know. I don't want to go behind dipper's back._

 _SG : You'll just give him more stress if he tries to hide it._

That was true. Dipper wouldn't have to hide in a small stuffy room while recovering. So much stress would be gone. For her too.

 _SS: Fine. Ill start a video call when I need you._

Mabel closed the lip of the laptop before waiting for a reply. And silently went to the door. As she was closing it, she met her brother's eyes. Her face felt hot with shame- but she was certain he didn't see it.

As leaned against the other side of the door, clutching the laptop to her chest, the tangle of guilt moved up to her throat, but another one still withered in her stomach.

But as bad as she felt, her head felt clear. She had to do this for Dipper. Push everything down and she'd be fine. Maybe she could make it up for- _No._ She wouldn't think about that.

As she headed towards the living room, she could hear Shermie, Eleanor, and her parents making light hearted small talk. Mabel hesitated. If she were to walk in there, she'd instantly kill the mood. The string tightened as she considered this.

Mabel shook her head. She had to do this. They could keep it a secret for God knows how long- but it had already been too much. And didn't grandpa deserve to know the truth about his brothers?

Mabel stepped out from the hallways and faced the two couches her family was sitting on. As soon as she did, all eyes were on her and the conversation faded to silence. Mabel took a gulp as she was swarmed with waves of fear.

 _You just have to detach yourself. It's just like giving reports._

"I have something to say," Mabel began, feeling very small. "You're going to have questions. You might not believe me, but please don't say anything until I'm done."

Mabel told of her time in Gravity Falls. She knew that as soon as the existence of the gnomes were revealed, her parents and grandparents probably looked very concerned, but she didn't look at their faces. She kept her eyes trained on a vase set over the fireplace. She didn't tell the story with her usual dramatic flair. There were no jazz hands when the author's identity was revealed. When Mabel got to Weirdmaggedon, she managed not to break down, but silent tears ran down her cheeks.

After she finished the story- up to when the Pines twins got on the bus to head back home, she stopped. Finally looking away from the vase, she saw her family's concerned faces. Icarus looked angry, but he was staring at the floor. Bethany had tears running down her face. Shermie's eyebrows were knit together in confusion while Eleanor was grabbing her husband's hand. All of them were shocked into silence.

Mabel didn't say anything as she placed the laptop on the table and opened it. The chat client was already open and on her messages with the Stan twins. Her shaky hand barely managed to use the trackpad to start a call. As the ringtone sounded ominously through the silent house, Mabel turned the laptop to face Shermie, while her parents got up and stood behind the couch. She also moved so that she could see the screen, but was out of range for her parents to do something like grab her hand. Mabel could feel the tension in the air.

The call went thru, showing Ford and Stan sitting in folding chairs on the Stan O' War II. The Stan twins didn't say anything, looking just as stressed as everyone else. Only the slightly corrupted white noise of the waves could be heard for a second before Shermie let out a gasp.

Shermie hand clamped his hand over his mouth, but his rapid breathing could still be heard. Tears were streaming down his face.

"Shermie- look," Stan said, "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for lying to you. I'm sorry for pushing Ford into that portal. I'm sorry for lying to Ma. I'm just- I'm so sorry. And if you hate me, that's understandable. If you want- I'll pay for you to come out here a punch me in the face personally."

With that, Shermie started manically cry-laughing. "I can't freaking believe it! Locking yourself off from the world? Not coming to Pa's own funeral! No answering my calls. That gift shop! Why couldn't I see-"

"Shermie, don't beat yourself up about it." Ford cautioned, "Somehow, no one figured it out."

"And you mean to tell me that all this fantasy stuff is real?" Shermie exclaimed, motioning to around the general room, which was covered in many creations depicting things from celestial dragons to classical eldritch horror. "Like it's not just bigfoot or Mothman- but other freaking planes and demons wanting to take over the world- stuff out of ddnmd!"

"Wait, you're not angry?" Stan asked, confused.

"Of course I'm angry," Shermie retorted, his words still punctured by cry-laughs, "I'm just feeling so much right now. I just-"

"Well this is quite a revelation," Eleanor deadpanned, "But just so we're all on the same page- everyone is more freaked out about the fact that the world almost ended and that magic is real then the whole twin switcheroo."

"I don't really know what to think," Beth replied, wiping her tears away. "This is all so overwhelming. And I can't get over the fact that us sending our kids to Gravity Falls put them in the way of so much harm."

"Mabel," Icarus said, "I hope you don't hold any grudges against you for putting you through so much."

"No- of course not. Gravity Falls was the best time of my life. I wouldn't trade it for anything." This was true. Despite the danger and long lasting physiological effects, Mabel didn't regret going to Gravity Falls.

Shermie had recovered enough that every other word wasn't punctured by a sorrowful chuckle. But everyone still spoke in a somber tone. "Mabel is Dipper ok?"

The mood, which was already pretty somber, dropped more as it felt another ball of yarn had been dropped down Mabel's stomach. "Oh yeah, we'd been planning this for a while." Mabel stared at the floor, "But went we went to put our stuff away, Dipper- I think he had a panic attack. He's fine now though. He's just resting."

"Oh. I can't believe we missed out much stress you were under," Beth said, before scooping up her daughter into a hug. After putting her daughter down, Eleanor stood up.

"Well, we might as well make your brother some nice comfort food. Maybe some tea or soup?"

"Well, this went better than we expected," Stan joked, "I mean we weren't really expecting anything but-"

"I think we're still in shock Stanf- sorry Stanley," Icarus said.

"That's understandable." Ford replied, "It's hard to know how to react when such fundamentals of your world. But since you seem to be handling it well, I assume we can log off? There's not much help we can providing cooking from halfway around the world."

"Oh right," Shermie shook his head, breaking himself out of staring into space.

As Shermie moved to end the call, Ford got one last statement in. "And Shermie, if you want to start up doing calls again, Mabel could probably set it up.

After closing the laptop lid, Shermie stood up from the couch. "I'm going to work on some art. I just need time alone." With no objections, he headed off to his studio.

"So," Eleanor said to Mabel, sounding a bit patronizing, "Would you like to make your brother tea or soup?"

"Hmm," Mabel pondered, "Does it have to be either of those? Could we make some cookies."

Eleanor kneeled down to Mabel's level. "You know what, we can make soup _and_ a batch of cookies. You're gonna have to share the cookies though, and we'll need everyone to help us."

"That sounds great!" Mabel exclaimed, actually feeling happy.

* * *

Eleanor, Mabel, and her parents worked on making soup and between steps, a nice batch of sugar cookies. It was enjoyable work, and the smell of soup and cookies did wonders for dispelling the somber aura.

However, not all was well. Mabel did seem bright and cheery, but it wasn't at the same level as normal. She wasn't as carefree or high energy. But no one noticed. Heck, even Mabel didn't see the difference. But it was there.

* * *

A soft knock on the door broke Dipper out of the uneasy concentration he had managed. Although it had been- what- like at least an hour, he still felt weak and exposed. Before he could attempt to compose himself in case it was one of his parents, he heard Mabel's voice behind the door.

"You awake bro-bro?"

"Yeah," Dipper replied weakly, "You can come in."

"Um, could you get the door. My hands are kinda full."

That certainly was an odd request, but Dipper compiled. He was surprised to see Mabel was carrying a tray with a bowl of soup, complete with a smaller bowl of oyster crackers. Her sweater was also covered in flour.

"Uh- how did you get that?"

"Oh-right," Mabel mumbled out, suddenly staring at the floor. "Uh- Iwentandtoldeveryonewhathappened"

It took Dipper a while to comprehend the message. "You did WHAT?" he exploded. His heart started racing again.

"Calm down- it's ok. They took it pretty well. Ford and I agreed that telling them would remove your source of stress and help you. And we might not get another chance. They took it really well."

Dipper did calm down with this clarification, but it was an uneasy calm.

"We all worked together to make you this soup- well all of us except grandpa. He needed some time to think."

There was a short, but very awkward pause as Dipper tried to think of something to reply with before Mabel broke the silence. "You can come eat out here with us or you can eat in here?"

"I think I'll join you out there." Dipper's stomach gurgled. "I am really hungry."

Dipper followed his sister out of the storage room and down the hall, to find his parents and Eleanor chatting in hushed tones. From the way they stopped when he entered, Dipper could tell they were talking about him.

Dipper's mother spoke up first. "I'm- uh- glad you decided to join us- I'm sorry I didn't notice- and what happened to you- and-" Beth's last words were cut off by a sob as she buried her face in her hands.

Dipper felt guilt stab through him. Maybe it would have been better to not make the plan at all. He wouldn't feel like all his energy had drained out on the floor. Shermie wouldn't be off doing god-knows-what. His mom wouldn't be sobbing into her hands.

"Dipper would you like to speak about what happened?" Eleanor asked in a calm voice.

"Ah, no," Dipper replied, honestly surprised that he was even being asked. But it was a relief. "I just want to sit down, and I dunno, do something. I don't want to talk, even about mundane stuff."

Eleanor nodded. "I understand." She turned to face Beth. "Beth, your son doesn't want to talk about what happened." She kept her voice calm and slow, but also firm. Dipper assumed this was how she resolved problems with her students. Although she seemed calm and in control, Dipper was sure she was worried. But she was in professional mode. And he was grateful for it.

Beth nodded mutely and whipped tears out of her eyes.

"Hey, um, where should I put the tray down? My arms are getting super sore," Mabel piped up. She sounded upbeat, but there was a slight crack in her voice at the end.

"Oh yeah, right." Eleanor quickly moved her cookie onto her lap so Mabel could place the tray.

Dipper caught his father's eyes. Icarus had always been more reserved and quiet, but now he wouldn't say anything. Instead, he had kept his eyes trained towards a painting of a celestial dragon over the mantelpiece, only glancing back at his children for a few quick seconds every now and then.

"Dipper," Eleanor inquired, using her level tone again, "you said you don't wish to talk, but would you mind joining us in the den to watch a movie- same for the rest of you."

"Yeah, that sounds fine."

* * *

The five of them brought the cookies and the tray to the den, a room with a small tv and a couch even more worn than the one in the living room. From the small movie collection, the Pines eventually decided on watching Prize Orb, an underrated animated steampunk pirate adventure movie that Dipper loved.

The entire family piled onto the couch, leaving a space for Dipper when was done with his soup and could get off the carpet. Mabel leaned up against Eleanor, while Beth rested her head on her husband's shoulder.

As Dipper ate the warm soup and watched a familiar movie with his family, he felt safe. After he finished he joined his family on the couch, snuggled between his sister and his mother. Three-fourths of the way through the movie, the twins fell asleep. Consciously they felt safe that evening as if their trouble were as far away as Gravity Falls itself. And subconsciously they were lucky, and the monsters weren't present in their dreams that night.

During the climax, Shermie entered the den. The other adults didn't say anything as Shermie sat down cross legged next to the couch, and began to carve a small block of wood.

When the credits ended, the twins were still asleep. The adults carefully got up draped a spare blanket over the youngest Pines. The two of them looked so peaceful on the couch. Mabel hadn't revealed the mental and emotional effects they had suffered after the summer ended. Although Eleanor suspected it, and even the parents did slightly, they could delude themselves that everyone was safe now and all the problems were over.

 _A/N: Oh and Prize Orb is supposed to be Treasure Planet._


	8. She's gone, She left before you woke

Mabel paused her knitting. For once she was sitting in the large orange chair in the Mystery Shack, rather than on the floor. In the kitchen, Ford, Stan, Shermie, and Dipper were talking about- something. It didn't matter what it was. It was winter break and the twins parents had agreed to allow them to stay at the Mystery Shack. The entire Pines family would have gone, but someone needed to remain home to tend to the chickens and Bast's new family (Eleanor) and the twins' parents were again swamped with work.

Mabel silently moved over to the pile containing everyone's winter clothes. Dipper and Mabel had never really seen the snow before, so the family had spent the past few hours playing. Then all the clothes had been thrown off into a soggy pile. She pulled out her own fluffy jacket and put it on over her pink hourglass sweater. She then complimented it with gloves, a scarf, and a hat. All of them had pale pink balls on the ends of them. In the end, Mabel looked like a small fabric gremlin.

Then she headed out. She needed to do something.

"Wait, did you hear that?" Ford asked.

"Do you mean in your nerd game or in _the real world_?" Stan shot back, all in good fun.

"Stan, if you were paying attention to this game, you'd know that Ford was neither using his character voice nor had Dipper asked for a perception check." Shermie replied.

"Yeah yeah, whatever."

Ford knew that even though Stan acted flippant, he really enjoyed playing with his family. Although a strong and silent type fighter who just hit stuff when necessary and didn't really do much else seemed dull to Ford, it warmed his heart to see his brother happy.

But there was a serious issue at hand.

"I'm serious," Ford said, cutting into the banter, "I thought I heard the door opening."

Fear instantly became plain on Shermie's face. "Do you think it's one of the monsters?"

"Hopefully not," Ford replied, "I did make sure to modify and strengthen the defenses we set up before we left for the Arctic in the summer and they should still hold. Any hostile anomalies won't be able to enter the shack."

Shermie turned around in his chair. "Mabel's clothes seem to be missing maybe she went out?"

"That doesn't seem like her," Dipper explained as Shermie turned back to a normal position. "Leaving without telling us."

"I'll go check," Ford said getting up. Something did feel right, and he didn't survive 30 years traveling the multiverse without trusting his intuition. Yes, even if it was faulty very frequently. He had gotten better. If he was as gullible as he was before entering the portal, he doubted he could have survived even 5 years.

"Ford, you sure you could manage alone?" Shermie asked.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Ford said standing up. "Also I'm the only one of you with tracking experience and actual weapon capabilities. If Mabel got herself involved in something, I should be able to manage."

Both Dipper and Shermie looked unsure, while Stan made an indignant huff.

"Well we will need to send someone to find her," Shermie mused, "but I don't think it's anything dangerous."

"All the more reason why I should be the one to go," Ford cut in.

"Yeah, let's send Six- Ford out there. I'm not getting myself all cold for this." Stan said.

"Dipper your thoughts?" Shermie asked.

"Ford should go. I am getting pretty worried."

"Glad that's decided," Ford said as he began walking towards the clothing pile for his own scarf and six-fingered gloves. And for good measure, he made sure that he had his electro-knife and stun blaster on him. Probably wouldn't need those, but it never hurt to have some sort of arsenal on you.

Ford walked out into the snow covered land of Gravity Falls. Doing so, he felt a small twinge of regret. His last winter here- really last in this dimension- had been 30 years. Oh, what he wished he could have done differently.

No! He shouldn't let himself get distracted. He needed to find Mabel.

Crouching down, Ford saw small bootprints heading straight into the woods. The strides were too close to be running, which didn't seem the most Mabel like, but they had to be hers. And if he still remembered the tracking lessons from Uthirth-Chroma, she walked with a purpose. Damn, those trackers he stayed with in that dimensions were so good, one of them could tell him if she was hesitant or worried and if she walked with anger. He had never managed to get a hang of it.

Right. He has to stay focused. Couldn't go getting nostalgic.

Standing up, Ford headed into the woods, following the tracks. Once he got father in, the trees starting blocking a lot of the heavy snowfall, but he could manage.

However, after a few more twists and turns, his heart started to sink. There was only one thing out here in this section, Bill's statue. Warier, Ford continued his approach.

Then he saw her, Mabel, crouching down in front of that cursed snow-covered statue. She was shaking and mumbling. A pastel pink glove lay in the snow, as a shivering hand reached out toward the statue-

"MABEL NO!"

Mabel looked up, tears stinging her cold cheeks to see Ford standing their, fear in his eyes. Startled she stood up. "No, no, no." She sobbed out, tears running down her cheeks. "This isn't what you think. I wasn't trying to- I don't know what I'm doing. I- I-"

She was surprised when it was Ford's face that fell. "I'm sorry Mabel."

The girl stopped. "Huh?"

Ford sat down on the snow, crossed legged, his head in his hands. "I'm sorry for- everything. I'm sorry I paid too much attention to Dipper. I couldn't see that you were hurting. _He_ was the one that tricked you, not Dipper."

Mabel started to approach her grunkle, as if he was a wounded animal. "It's not your fault," she said, wiping tears away with her numb hand. "I tried so hard to hide it. I didn't want anyone to see. Even after Dipper got me to stop cutting, I still tried to act like everything was fine."

Her voice turned bitter. "I was Mabel? Why wasn't I fine? It's not like I suffered during weirdmaggedon? I was just a prisoner in a bubble of my own creation. I was the stupid gullible girl who could bounce back from anything. Now that everything's all rainbows and kittens, I was safe. Stan got his memories back. You two made up. Everything was ok!" She broke into ironic tear stained laughter.

"No it's not," Ford tried to console. "That's not how the human brain works. Sometimes, it's the scars we don't see that are the worst. You're right to be hurting, but you need to tell us. And I don't want you doing anything rash."

The tightness Mabel didn't realize was in her chest started to lessen. The fact her ungloved hand was numb became much more apparent.

Ford stood up. "Is there something I- we can do to help you? We can't get help from professionals, we just have each other- but we should make the most of it. We could go inside, make cookies, watch silly movies. Whatever you want. I'm sure our brothers would agree."

Mabel took 3 deep breaths before replying. "That does sound pretty good. Also could you carry me back? It's cold and I'm not really sure how to get home. I don't even know how I managed to find this place."

Ford smiled, as he picked her up, struggling a bit. After a bit of maneuvering, he eventually got it so Mabel was facing behind him while he supported her with both hands. Together, their warmth keeping each other safe, they headed off back to the Mystery Shack.

When Ford brought Mabel back inside, they were greeted with cheers and hugs. Shermie looked so reviled it was actually funny. Letting Mabel choose the activities, the five of them ended up polishing off any sweets still in the house. They all tried to cram themselves into the big central chair under heavy blankets, but Shermie and Ford ended up on the floor. Using a combination of vcr recordings and dvd box sets, the family marathoned the entirety of Ducktective. Once they ran out of episodes, Shermie effectively introduced into the fandom, they just ended up watching cheesy game shows.

Everything wasn't better. There would be struggles on the road ahead, for everyone. But their bonds were stronger than ever. They would face the challenges together, the ones in everyday life and those from invisible scars and those mundane challenges everyone faces.

Notes: _I finally did it everyone! Here it is, the entire fic. I can't believe it's been 1 week less than an entire year since I started writing this. Sorry about the massive hiatuses everyone. I'm probably going to focus on one shots more in the future so that I can write things faster when they're still my special interest._

 _Also due to formating being harder, I probably won't be posting on anymore, just Ao3 and links from my tumblr. So if you want to check those out, it's absolxguardian on both._


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